


Destiny Denied

by Hyrulehearts1123, sageclover61



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alive Renfri | Shrike (The Witcher), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Geraskier Big Bang (The Witcher), Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Mage Jaskier | Dandelion, Witcher Jaskier | Dandelion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:09:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28795179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyrulehearts1123/pseuds/Hyrulehearts1123, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageclover61/pseuds/sageclover61
Summary: Stregobor created Witchers to be the perfect monster hunters, but they rose up against their creators and were not loyal to them. And so in revenge, Stregobor kidnapped one Witcher’s child of surprise, a young Julian Alfred Pankretz de Lettenhove. And yet, because of one small medallion that spoke to him, Jaskier’s loyalties were not to Stregobor, but to the Witchers who tried to raise him despite the distance.
Relationships: Aiden/Lambert (The Witcher), Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Merten/Guxart/Vesemir (The Witcher)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 273





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Featuring art by CassandrasDreamworld, as part of the Geralt Jaskier big bang!

In the beginning, the Witchers were merely a bored mage’s unethical experiment. Could they create a human shaped predator capable of exterminating the monstrous vermin that made short work of the humans on the continent? They could, and they did. It was easy to say that the first witchers were no longer human. They were sharper, faster, stronger than any human could ever hope of becoming, and colder, crueler,  _ more dangerous _ than the monsters they faced could ever hope of being.

Humans didn’t like witchers, but they were the lesser of two evils. They were fearsome mercenaries, but they killed the monsters that would dare hurt humans.

That didn’t stop the rumors from spreading, lies, exaggeration, and spiteful hatred of the inhuman, and the prideful arrogance of mages who would never learn the mistake of their own hubris and continued with the experimentation.

The Witchers allowed the original trials to continue and with it the death of seven in ten trainees, for less than a hundred years, and then as soon as the potions were discovered that caused not a single death, they rose up against their creators and freed themselves from the inhumane practices of non consensual experimentation.

There were seven schools of Witchers, and they were free from the horrors that had taunted their youth, and together they were a People. A culture. It didn’t matter that they were geographically spread across the continent. They were still Kin.

The conquering of Northeastern Kaedwen, from Yspaden,  _ which was in Redania, but nobody actually cared about that,  _ to just south of Ard Carraigh, was a complete accident. Ard Carraigh’s king and his court mage were terrifying pieces of human shaped  _ monsters. _

King Radowit II and his son, Henselt, were vocal in their shared disdain for all non-humans, from Witchers to elves and everything in between. So much so that Henselt orchestrated a plan to exterminate all those who called the areas around the Pontar, Gwenllech, and Buina home.

The Wolves of Kaer Morhen and the Cats of Stygga Citadel could only do so much to help the elves in the beginning, for they weren’t supposed to involve themselves in the affairs and politics of humans. But in the end, their policy of noninterference was a temporary one.

King Radowit II encouraged a tournament between the schools, specifically the Wolves and the Cats, and used it as an ambush attempt, and the Witchers could not allow that to stand. Almost before they’d realized what they had done, the King, his son, and their magicians had been slain in self defence, and Ard Carraigh belonged to them.

  
Yspaden surrendered shortly after, when they saw how well North Kaedwen prospered while they suffered under their own King of Redania. And so the Witchers of the School of the Cat and the Witchers of the School of the Wolf protected those they considered to be their  _ people,  _ and it became a sanctuary.

* * *

The rest of the schools of Witchers, the Griffins, The Bears, the Vipers, the Manticores, and the Cranes all migrated back to Northeastern Kaedwen all at once, with the entirety of their schools and the most important of their texts.

Each school had a terrifying story to tell, of the humans or mages who had surrounded their keeps and tried to bring them down around their heads. The mages lusted after the magical texts the Griffins guarded with their lives, the Bears had chosen not to decimate a nest of ancient vampires who did not feed from humans who did not consent, and the Vipers had taken too many politically motivated contracts.

The manticores and the cranes just didn’t want to be left out.

And so, all the schools of Witchers once again banded together to keep their corner of the continent, safe and protected for the nonhumans who lived there. The monsters might be monstrous, or they might be human shaped, but if they hurt those who could not defend themselves then they did not deserve their life.

For all witchers were kin to each other, and those who sought sanctuary were provided for.

All the schools raised their young children and trainees together. Each school had a special focus, and that did not guarantee that each child one of theirs picked up would be best suited to that school. They were close enough that there were no real hard feelings should a child of surprise of the Griffin school choose instead to undergo the mutations of one of the other schools, or even if, in the end, they underwent no mutations at all.

Becoming a Witcher was in fact a choice, and not becoming a Witcher at all was in fact a valid choice.

Only three in ten children becoming Witchers did not in fact mean that undergoing mutations killed the rest of them off, it merely meant that a majority of the children who found themselves in the care of Witchers went on to do something other than witchering. There was nothing wrong with that, it was just a point of severe miscommunication.

* * *

Julian Alfred Pankratz was a child of surprise, born before his mother’s husband returned from some battle whereupon he was saved by a Witcher. Jaskier was not his son, but his mother wouldn’t admit who the affair had been with, so it was ignored.

That did not mean that Jaskier was not still the child of surprise, nor that his mother’s husband treated Jaskier as though he was his son. For all the man cared, Jaskier was not his son. The people of Lettenhove did not know of the scandal, or what occurred behind closed doors, or even that a Witcher might one day involve himself in their business.

Jaskier was not a happy child. Just an unhappy and unwanted aristocratic offspring whose only desire was for freedom of expression, or maybe to go listen to that music he was not allowed to participate in. Forced to wear uncomfortable and drab formal wear and to be seen but not heard, it was a rare sight to see a smile on the child’s face.

This child was not easily awed by the wonders of the world, too aware of its darkest secrets for the innocence of youth.

Jaskier was seven when the old Manticore called Merten arrived at the Lettenhove estate, seeking that which was his. He would take his Child of Surprise to Kaer Morhen for training. 

One did not lightly thwart destiny by denying the pull of your child surprise. Merten didn’t, or rather, he didn’t intend to.

Or maybe Destiny just had other plans in mind for Jaskier.


	2. Chapter 2

It seemed easy. They’d all done it at least a dozen times. It was not even that unusual for the family to be pleased to be rid of another mouth to feed. Witchers weren’t necessarily respected, but they were necessary to keep the monsters at bay, and most people understood that at least slightly.

It was  _ always _ the aristocats and royalty that thought they got to be exempt from the laws of the land. But as Geralt would put it later, “A promise made must be honored. As true for a commoner as it is for a queen.” The law of surprise was a promise bound with blood. A blood pact that whatever was found upon returning home would be given to the one the promise was owed to.

Everyone seemed to forget that when there was a child involved.

“He may not be my son by birth, but neither does that mean you can have him either!” Jaskier’s stepfather all but screamed at Merten.

They were outside in the courtyard, making a scene. Julian was standing demurely in the shadows, holding a closed book to his chest as he watched the scene unfold. He knew all the deepest secrets about Witchers, the ones parents didn’t want their children to know.

Anyone who wanted a new life or an escape was usually welcomed by the Witchers, whether to become one or to be given a new and better life. Parents made Witchers out to be the nightmare under the bed, but only to discourage their would-be runaways from becoming Witchers themselves.

Julian knew other children who wanted nothing more than to become great monster hunters themselves, but he wasn’t sure he wanted a part of the monster hunting. Not all of the monsters were inherently evil, some of them were just hungry, or misunderstood, and some of them were only created because of human stupidity. On the other hand, they got to travel the continent and Julian almost salivated at the thought of all the stories a person could hear, traveling around the continent for centuries.

And yet, how boring must such a long life be, he wondered, traveling alone all by oneself, slaying humanities’ monsters. He would want to travel with someone. Someone to share those many long nights beside a campfire with.

“You can’t have him!” Julian’s stepfather shouted, drawing his sword against the unarmed Witcher. The Witcher with a medallion around his neck that seemed to have the appearance of some creature, probably a manticore, Julian decided. The Witcher was unarmed because the guards would not have allowed an armed man into the courtyard. 

“No!” Julian shouted. It wasn’t fair. He knew he was a Witcher’s child of surprise, had known that such a thing meant he was supposed to go with the Witcher when the Witcher claimed him. That was how it worked, after all.

When Witchers weren’t involved, being someone’s child of surprise was generally like having an extra guardian. Sometimes a friendship, sometimes a parent, and very rarely, it was useful for an arranged marriage.

“Someone who can offer more than you could ever dream of, has already offered to take the boy off my hands,” Julian’s stepfather explained as he drove the blade towards the Witcher.

That was news to Julian, but he wondered if that had something to do with the members of the Brotherhood of Sorcerers who had been dropping by frequently over the last few months. The mages scared Julian, their leary gazes and ethereal features, and the quiet whispers behind closed doors. They were secretive, and always watching. It made the young boy feel like a mouse in a maze.

“No!” Julian shouted again as his stepfather thrust the blade forward and the Witcher sidestepped. There was a set of stairs, leading down into the crypt, and in his mind’s eye, Julian could see the Witcher falling down them as his stepfather drove him backwards.

The book fell from Julian’s grasp as he stepped forward, uncertain what he was about to do but knowing he had to do  _ something _ .

"Stop!" he shouted as the book never hit the ground. Chaos filled the air around him, and it almost felt like the moments before a thunderstrike, when the static was palpable. 

"Aard!" he screamed. He had no idea where the word came from, but Julian felt a compulsion he could not resist, nor did he want to.

He watched, as if frozen by some unseen force, as both the Witcher and his stepfather were  _ pushed _ , falling down the stairs to the crypt. He watched, eyes wide with horror, as they both failed to catch themselves, heads meeting the stone steps with a sickening  _ crunch _ .

He ran forward, chaos still coiling in his gut. His stepfather's neck was cleanly broken, the injury clearly life ending. The Witcher seemed in better condition, but was also unmoving.

He'd done this. How? Why? All he'd wanted to was prevent his stepfather from killing the Witcher, and now they could both so easily be dead.

"Julek, Julek, Julek."

Julian turned, hackles rising. He didn't like that voice, he didn't like it at all. He could recall hearing it behind a closed door or two, and he'd always fled away from it. Scared without knowing what he was afraid of.

The owner was clearly one of the mages from the Brotherhood of Sorcerers and Julian did not like him, not at all.

_ "Take me, take me." _ It was a whisper of chaos that seemed to emanate from the Manticore Medallion inches from Jaskier's fingertips, so he palmed it the way he'd started pilfering little things from the kitchen or the castle. The Witcher would notice it was gone, if he ever woke up, but Julian wasn't going to disobey the instructions of the Chaos.

He slipped the medallion into his pocket as he tilted his head in confusion at the mage.

“I had wondered when your Conduit Moment would come.” The expression of greed and excitement in the face of the two deaths at the child’s hands was one that would easily haunt Julian for the rest of his life. “To be able to kill two fully grown men, you would be powerful indeed…” The man trailed off

Tears streamed down Julian’s as he tried and failed to deny whatever he had done to his stepfather and the Witcher.

The man smiled then, kneeling to be close to Julian.  _ Too close. _ “But you did, and this is the result.” And then he leaned in  _ even closer _ , filling the entirety of Julian’s vision. “There is great strength in you, and I  _ will _ show you how to control it.”

There was something about the man, something about his words, that made Julian want to listen to anything that he had to say, to do anything that he asked of him, but there was something that was keeping him from falling headfirst into the quiet oblivion that tempted at the edge of his awareness. A strange, pulsing warmth in his pocket. The pocket that he had put the pendant into.

As he became more aware of the pulsing, he started to hear a hum, and a soft whisper that seemed to be as familiar to him as the chirping of the birds that would make their nest outside his window every spring.

_ Don’t listen to him, _ the whisper seemed to say, the words weaving their way into his mind, blocking out everything else.  _ Don’t react, don’t let him know that his magic has not touched you, that you are still aware of yourself. _

He didn’t know what the strange whispers were talking about, but he didn’t think that he would be able to show any sign of ‘being aware of himself’, as the terror and exhaustion finally caught up to him, leaving him empty and numb against the harshness of the outside world. He didn’t fight as the man pulled him away from the lifeless forms that he had been beside for an uncertain amount of time, and through a portal to places unknown.

* * *

Vesemir was running for the two sorceresses allowed in Kaer Morhen almost as soon as Merten had arrived in the courtyard in Lettenhove. They communicated freely through their medallions, and even he felt ill at ease as Merten had suggested that something was strange about the place. Something was  _ wrong _ , he could feel it in his gut, and from the way he could hear Guxart growling through the medallion, their third mate could feel it too.

“Vesemir? What’s wrong?” Triss asked as soon as she’d pulled her chamber doors open. She was wearing a heavy dressing gown and he could see Yennefer rising from a chaise deeper in the room.

He tried to calm himself. “A portal,” he said. “Can you prepare a portal to Lettenhove?” It was possible that nothing was wrong, but with all the protections they had in place against mages, getting a portal would not be an instant feat so it was better to be prepared.

If they were wrong, they would just save Merten and the child he was retrieving a long walk across the continent. Nothing wrong with that.

“It’ll take a few minutes to make preparations for that, but we can,” Yennefer said. “That’s where Merten was going, right? Did something happen?”

“Something isn’t right,” Vesemir said. “We don’t know what.” He had been wary, at first, when Geralt had found the two sorceresses seeking sanctuary, but they  _ had  _ proved themselves trustworthy and it was good to know that if something went wrong, Merten was only a portal away, rather than a fortnight’s ride.

“We can make the portal in here, if you’d like to have a seat while we prepare? Let us know when you’re ready for the portal, or if anything changes,” Triss suggested, stepping aside to let Vesemir into the room.

“I need to meditate to get a better focus on Merten’s medallion.” Vesemir sat cross legged on the floor, and focused on what he could hear from Merten’s medallion. 

He couldn’t see clearly what Merten could see, but he could hear the shouting in the background, and he knew that Merten was mostly unarmed, and saw the moment that the man Merten had rescued all those years ago decided to attack, but there was something else, too. A moment where it felt like the entire world was waiting on bated breath. Something, something big was about to happen.

In a peripheral there was a boy with a book, and a  _ shout _ , a shout of a spell that he shouldn’t have known, and chaos that swirled around him, if the fact the book continued to  _ float  _ was any indication, but the  _ sign _ . An Aard with no hand motion should have had no effect, except that it  _ clearly  _ was strong enough to do something if it sent both the human and the Witcher down the stairs.

And then he was encouraging the lad to take Merten’s medallion because Trouble was afoot. He could smell the scent of chaos, not the boy’s or Merten’s signs, not the portal he’d asked Triss and Yennefer to conjure that wasn’t ready yet.

A magician, then. A magician conspiring to  _ steal  _ a Witcher’s child.

There was nothing Vesemir could do, except warn the child to hide that he was unaffected by the Mage's equivalent of Axii, and feel his horror as Stregobor dragged him through a portal.

He could hear Jaskier's terror on the other side of the portal, but the connection became muted. He could not see clearly, and everything further than Stregobor was to the boy he'd called Julek was muffled.

Vesemir yanked himself out of meditation.

"Stregobor kidnapped the child. We need to go to Lettenhove, Merten is injured."

"Of course." Triss curtsied.

"Merten's medallion vanished, I can't track it. But I can get you to the spot it disappeared from."

A moment later, a portal opened in the sorceresses' drawing room and the three of them hurried through.

* * *

Merten was just picking himself up off the ground when Triss, Vesemir, and Yennefer landed in Lettenhove.

"That  _ sorcerer _ ," Merten snarled. He was angry, but Vesemir caught a whiff of defeat in his scent. And self loathing.

"It was Stegobor," Vesemir said. “Our Beloved Creator, may he die in a pit of rotfiends.” Vesemir had been one of the original experimental test subjects in the early creation of Witchers, and while most of his memories from before the time when witchers had risen up against the mages who had continued their unethical experiments were fuzzy, he did remember that Stregobor had been one of the very few who had escaped their wrath, and he had also likely been the mastermind behind it.

“I can’t track where his portal went,” Yennefer said. “Wherever they went, it’s too well warded. They’re gone.”

“Ban Ard. Of course they went to Ban Ard. Where else would they go but the Impenetrable Mage Academy for boys?” Vesemir shook his head. “The only good news is the kid took the Manticore Medallion, so at least maybe we can try to keep an eye on him.”

* * *

“So, why did you do it?” Merten asked, strolling up to the woman he determined to be Julian’s mother by scent. “Why give the boy to the mages? He was  _ my  _ Child of Surprise.”

The widow shrugged, seemingly unbothered by the events of the morning. “The Mages offered more than you could ever  _ dream  _ of, why would I say no? He promised to make us powerful.”

“In return for your firstborn.” Yennefer looked livid. Vesemir couldn’t really blame her for that. The Brotherhood of Sorcerers had taken, and  _ taken _ , from all of them, but so much more from the young women. “How could you give him up so easily?”

“I didn’t want him, and it’s not like he was my husband’s, either.”

It was Triss’ turn to rage then, regarding the woman with a glare that would have been powerful enough to kill. "And am I supposed to believe that it's the child’s fault? Last I checked, it isn't a child who decides to spread their legs for another while their husband is away, trying to keep his family safe from invaders!"

Merten sent an amused glance towards the young mage, and Vesemir could feel Guxart’s equal amusement from the medallion. Triss and Yennefer had arrived at Kaer Morhen as terrified teenagers having escaped from Stregobor’s terrible experiments, but they had flourished in the Witcher’s keep. It was clear in the way they presented themselves, now a united front, no longer subjugated by those who should have protected them.

“There’s nothing else for us to learn here,” Yennefer said. “We might as well go back and come up with a new plan.” And with that, they returned to Kaer Morhen.


	3. Chapter 3

The years that he had spent in Ban Ard had been some of the most tense, fear filled days in Jaskier’s life. Every single day, there was some new danger that the pendant in his pocket would warn him of, whispering in his ear to keep a distance from the teachers, from other students, and even to avoid certain paths while traveling to and from his classes.

Others had laughed at him for taking far longer paths between his room to his first class, from that class to the next, to the dining hall, to the library, to the final class of the day, and back to his room. But as time passed, they could all see the way that some of the quiet students got quieter, how the favorite students of some of the teachers began to slack in their classes, and even how several among them vanished entirely, leaving behind nothing but warnings of not practicing magic without supervision from the instructors.

Slowly, the other students started to stay closer to him, and before the end of his third year at Ban Ard, he had found his place. He needed to stay where he was, and protect the others as best as he could, no matter what he had to do.

* * *

Julek was thirteen when he killed a man.

He had been in the library, searching for a book he needed for research, when he’d heard someone sobbing not far from him, and the medallion that he had taken from the body of the man that his father had killed started vibrating in a warning far stronger than it ever had before.

In the past, he had always ran away from whatever was causing the medallion to shake and vibrate. But this was so close, he couldn’t just ignore it. He needed to do something,  _ anything _ , to make the vibrating stop.

He wasn’t expecting to see one of his classmates, pinned against a bookshelf by one of the instructors, blood oozing from a wound on his head. He had frozen, uncertain how to react, when the instructor had turned, a sickeningly dark smile on his face. “Look at that,” he spoke, the smile growing. “Another of your friends wants to join us.”

The world had gone dark then, and when Julek was aware of what was happening again, he was holding his classmate, staring at a scorch mark where the instructor had once stood.

Officially, it was yet another accident, caused by experimenting with unfamiliar magic without proper assistance or supervision. It was a warning to everyone that no one was immune to the possibility of things going wrong.

But Julek and several of his classmates knew the truth of what had happened that afternoon, and it had only solidified his place as a protector, even by students older than he. He never said anything to any of them. Everyone needed someone to protect them, even if they didn't believe they should need it.

The memory of a Witcher laying dead in his home would never let him forget that fact.

* * *

In Vesemir’s room, it was pandemonium. 

Merten, Guxart, Triss, and Yennefer had gathered there with Vesemir to discuss the next steps in trying to find a way to free Julian from Stregobor’s grimy clutches, when they had felt it. All Witcher Medallions were spelled to warn their wearer of danger, but with Julian so deeply entrenched in enemy territory, it also told them when he was in immediate danger. For the most part, they were able to convey a path  _ away  _ from the danger.

Unfortunately, even though Julian was raised apart from the chaos welcoming environment that Kaer Morhen provided, he seemed just as determined to find his way into danger. And so, when the Medallion that he’d taken from Merten had warned them all of a dangerous situation, they’d started urging him to turn around, and walk away.

And then he’d walked  _ right towards it. _

The two witchers wearing their medallions could not pretend that they had not heard the exact sound that lured Julian in. A monster’s imitation of children’s wailing had led more than one unsuspecting Witcher to their death, and this was no mere imitation. If any of them had been there, they would have gone towards it as well, to try and save the child. But Julian was also just that, a child, and had little knowledge or skill with which to defend himself.

And yet, unlike previous similar circumstances, they were unable to encourage Julian to avoid the situation, and he ran straight towards it.

Like a fucking  _ hero. _

The situation only got worse from there, though, if the smoldering pile of former sadistic adult mage was anything to go by.

“I thought we had him trained to run  _ away _ from whatever was making the amulet vibrate!” Guxart screamed, throwing one of his many knives into the door in his frustration.

“We did,” Vesemir replied with a frown as Merten shifted to lie across Guxart’s legs before any more throwing knives could be thrown. They could all defend themselves, but it was better to not be throwing knives in the proximity of where the women were standing. “What changed?”

“I don’t know how much you heard, but I heard the sound of a child begging.” Yennefer cut in, her face grim as she glanced towards the Witchers. “It’s possible that he acted for the sake of another, and not just out of arrogance at his abilities to defend himself.”

“I would have assumed that was a given,” Merten countered. “I think Vesemir was specifically asking why  _ this  _ is the turning point. You all have heard plenty of children sobbing in Ban Ard, this can’t possibly be the first one Julian himself has heard. So why did he help  _ this  _ one.”

"Because he saw something that we couldn't," Triss spoke softly, though all attention in the room turned towards her. "We know that there was a child, and an adult, but not what was happening. I would wager that he saw something, something far worse than anything he's seen so far, and I can't even begin to imagine what it was."

Yennefer nodded. "We all know too well what the monsters there are willing to do to children."

It was in that moment that Julian turned to ask the sobbing child if he was okay, and they could see for themselves why Julian had acted.

The boy was cowering on the floor, hands clutching at a gaping head wound. It was nothing shy of a miracle that he was still  _ alive _ , let alone conscious enough to be a quivering mess.

Once the scene had been described to the rest of the room, Vesemir could see Triss shake, as her instincts as a Healer demanded she help, yet she was unable to.

There was a cloak on the back of a chair, and Vesemir wasn’t sure who it belonged to any more, he and Guxart and Merten wore it freely when they needed to. But Vesemir watched as Yennefer lifted it and carefully draped it over Triss’ shoulders. The weight and pressure of it seemed to help Triss settle, if only a little.

“Can we-” Triss worried at her bottom lip, seemingly trying to decide if her vague idea was worth pondering aloud. “Would Julian listen to instructions on how to heal the other boy?”

Guxart shrugged, shoving Merten off his body and moving towards the mages as he removed his Cat medallion, gently draping it around Triss' neck. "It's worth a try, if nothing else. You remember how to use the medallion?"

At her shaky nod, he backed away, allowing her the space to focus.

Vesemir could hear her mentally prodding Julian’s wellbeing, and asking vague questions to gauge the situation. They all had to be vague in their interactions, because Julian wasn’t explicitly aware with whom he was communicating with, or possibly even that he was communicating with actual people at all. It would be far too dangerous yet for Julian to know that he was communicating with the world outside Ban Ard.

But that didn’t stop Triss from getting answers and encouraging him to help the boy with instructions on how he can do so.

Vesemir tuned most of it out, choosing instead to press his weight against Guxart’s side when the Cat returned to his place on their bed. Merten draped himself over their knees, and Vesemir found himself scratching Merten’s scalp.

Yennefer drew Triss to the loveseat so she could focus entirely on her mental conversation rather than trying to meditate while standing, and sat on the arm of it once Triss was horizontal, the cloak across her like a blanket.

“Is Julian listening?” Merten asked.

Vesemir slipped his own Wolf Medallion off, and hung it over Merten’s side so that it was sitting against all three of them. The connection wouldn’t be as strong as if one of them was wearing it, but they could hear Triss’ words, and see glimpses of Julian tending the head wound, and that was enough.

* * *

Julek’s punishment for the dead professor was an anklet of Dimeritium. He and his classmate may have tried to pass the death off as having nothing to do with them, but nothing could get by Stregobor, and Stregobor deemed Julek’s action worthy of great punishment.

The anklet of dimeritium was torturous. It left him feverish and nauseated and unable to move from his cot. That was even before any attempt to use magic caused the area around the anklet to burn, as though it were a bed of hot coals glued to his body.

_ Was this what dying felt like?  _ he wondered as his fever spiked dangerously and he hallucinated soft voices from the medallion. Sometimes they sang, but once, just once, a voice persuaded him to drag himself to his kit of potion ingredients.

An igni to heat the pot the water would have had him sobbing, had he not been too weak to do more than keen in pain. He added willow bark, and yarrow, and ginger and just a pinch of valerian into the pot at the insistence of the voice.

He hadn’t been able to keep anything down in days, but he listened to the urgency with which he was persuaded to drink the tea. Once the tea was gone, he retreated to his cot only to fall almost instantly into a fitful sleep.

* * *

“That shouldn’t have poisoned him! Did I poison him? Willow bark and Yarrow for fevers, ginger for nausea, and valerian for pain.” Triss paced Vesemir’s quarters forcefully, and the old witcher felt a hint of amusement at the thought of her wearing a hole in the floor.

“He hasn’t eaten in days, and I’m sure I caught the scent of burnt flesh when he used that Igni. His body is probably forcing him to rest, and he needs it. Don’t try to wake him yet, Triss,” Vesemir said. “The patients you worry about never waking up, we wake them every four hours, right?”

Triss slowed her pace and nodded hesitantly in Vesemir’s direction. “You want me to wait four hours.”

“Give the potion a little while to work. He was clearly in agony, waking him now won’t help that, and he’ll be uncomfortable if he can’t go back to sleep.”

“What if he doesn’t?” 

“He’ll be fine.” Vesemir had to believe that to be true, that destiny wouldn’t be so cruel as to keep Merten’s Child of Surprise away from them forever. Bad things happened when Witchers failed to retrieve their Surprises, but Merten  _ had gone to retrieve him. _ Stregobor had been the one to get in Destiny’s way. He picked up a book off his nightstand that had made him think of Julian. “I found a book of lullabies in the library, if you want it.”

“Thanks.” Triss wandered over and took the book before settling on the loveseat to peruse it. Sometimes Vesemir thought he could hear a hint of humming under her breath.

* * *

The first two weeks after that were the worst for Julek. A potion of ginger, lemon, fennel and peppermint helped with the worst of the nausea, and the valerian eased the pain to an extent, but those were only the immediate concerns 

At first, the teachers were irate that he had missed classes, and more so for his inability to participate in them well enough due to the magic suppression, but no sooner would they threaten him than they would forget he existed.

His classmates who had started following him because his routes through the castle were safer stopped traveling with him, and soon began failing to even acknowledge his presence. Trying to initiate any conversation with them also quickly revealed that it was much like he was mute. Or invisible.

More importantly, he’d learned something important. He needed to be able to perform magical feats despite the limitation of the dimeritium. So he would have to learn to ignore the blurring flesh of his ankle.

He was also trying to find a way to suppress the effects of the Dimeritium, but that wasn’t anything that he would admit to anyone.

It was written that those who wore Dimeritium were entirely unable to cast spells or use magic at all, though certain extraordinary mages had been known to be able to do just that. That clearly wasn’t the case, given that Julek could still attempt to follow the lessons with things happening to an extent, but it was clear from the lack of information in the library that nobody wanted research or knowledge to be further learned about Dimeritium.

  
Probably in hopes of preventing someone like him from figuring out how to work around the anklet. But he was going to need to figure  _ something  _ out, if he was ever going to escape Ban Ard.

* * *

Coen was 16 when he decided that enough was enough, and something had to be done about the Child of Surprise clearly missing from their ranks of young witchers in training.

Everyone  _ knew  _ that Stregobor had kidnapped Merten’s last Child of Surprise, and that the child had managed to steal Merten’s amulet. Fewer witchers knew more secret details, such as the fact that Vesemir’s pack still watched out for the child through the medallion, and even conversed with him at times.   
  


The young Griffen knew even more secrets than that. Like how worried Kaer Morhen’s sorceresses were that a torture even adult mages had trouble withstanding had been inflicted on him for weeks. Coen knew it was tearing his three favorite elders apart that they could do nothing but offer comfort he might not even know was real, and he couldn’t let that stand.

Griffins were known for their honor, and there was nothing more dishonorable than leaving a child in an enemy castle if there was something to be done about it, so he did what any self respecting hero would do.

He traded for extra lock picking lessons with Aiden, the Cat in training he believed to have the greatest aptitude for it while also being the least likely to ask any questions. He begged Triss to let him help with her potion restocking until he’d memorized every healing potion that could remotely help a young Mage or Witcher. Burns, nausea, nerves, insomnia. As well as the breaking of basic enchantments.

Coen had passed all his trials already, so when he decided he was ready, he headed out in search of Ban Ard, a secret school for boys who would be mages so secret that nobody knew where it was located except that it was  _ probably  _ in Kaedwen.

Leaving Kaer Morhen hadn’t been hard, a shrug here, a mention of the Path there, and an off-handed promise to meet with another Witcher before taking any contracts, and no one was any the wiser. He wasn’t even the only one who had left that season, as his class had graduated in the past winter, and were simply awaiting the call of the Path. It made for the perfect cover, and within a week, he was steadily working on ruling out areas where Ban Ard couldn't be. 

The territory that the Witchers controlled, for example. The Mages would be fools to try and hide from them in their own land, which they knew every inch of through their constant patrolling of the villages and settlements that looked to them for protection, from monsters and invaders alike. 

If it really was in Kaedwen, then, that meant it had to be in Southern Kaedwen. There weren't any settlements between the south edge of Witcher Territory and the northern border of Aedirn, hence why their territory didn't extend all the way to Aedirn.

There were probably other reasons as well, and Ban Ard being somewhere in wild Kaedwen was as a reason as any, in his opinion.

And then he practically stumbled over the castle in the woods and really, that was his entire goal.

* * *

Julek had been wearing the anklet just shy of two months when there was a knock on his bedroom door.

It had been long enough that he hadn't spoken to a single soul in a few weeks, but stranger still because not once had anyone come to visit his room, even before he'd seemingly ceased to exist.

Palming the dagger he kept under his bed at the firm insistence of the medallion around his neck, he crept slowly to the door and opened it even more slowly.

His medallion didn't hum in danger, if anything it actually seemed to hum in just the opposite.

Safest that he had ever been, perhaps?

And then he saw the medallion with a griffin shaped head decorating it.

_ "Coen!"  _ the voices in his own medallion seemed to exclaim. Julek couldn't determine whether it was in anger or in fear, but he could tell that he wasn't in danger, so there was that.

“Julian, right?” The Witcher in front of him asked quietly, a broad grin on his face. “I’m here to help, and I’ve brought some potions for you. Can I come in?”

Julian. No one had called Julek that in almost seven years, and he would have forgotten that name entirely, if not for the voices in his medallion. 

He stared at the Witcher for a moment, then cast a glance down the corridors outside his door. Just because no one acknowledged his existence any more didn’t mean that someone wouldn’t see the Witcher and report him for being out of place. The last thing Julek needed was  _ Stregobor  _ coming to investigate.

“Coen?” He wasn’t sure what else the Manticore Medallion could have meant unless that was the Griffin Witcher’s name. He stepped to the side so he was no longer blocking the entry way. “Come out of the hallway before someone sees you. Unless I can persuade you to walk back out whatever door brought you into Ban Ard?” The Griffin stepped into the room so Julek shut the door. “Didn’t think so.” He shook his head and wandered back over to his cot. “So, Coen of the School of the Griffin. What brings you to Ban Ard?”

The Griffin shrugged, as he reached for his pack and dug through it for something. “Got bored, needed a change of pace. Decided that I’d take a vacation, and Ban Ard was as good a place as any.” He paused for a moment, before grinning again. “Besides, everyone needs a friendly face, and I couldn’t stand the thought of you not seeing mine.”

Julek snorted. “Are you even real?” He shook his head and wandered over to his makeshift table with potions ingredients lying on it. “Well, let it not be said that I am inhospitable towards tourists! Would you care for a pot of tea?” Without waiting for a response, he dug into his potions mixture with a fury that caused an empty vial to be flung across the room and at Coen’s head.

Just before it could land, though, the Witcher managed to catch it. He sniffed it. “Valerian?”

Julek pouted. “It’s all gone, too. I  _ need  _ that. I need that to  _ sleep _ . Something I clearly need more of given there’s no way you’re actually here playing the role of a tourist in Ban Ard. Metittle, Julek, what is wrong with your brain tonight. Witchers in  _ Ban Ard _ of all places. They’re  _ mortal enemies. _ ”

In an instant, Coen’s face turned serious, and he moved closer to Julek, gently placing the vial on the table. “I swear to you, I’m as real as the sun, as real as the medallion that you wear, and as real as the voices that I  _ know _ are coming through it, because I kind of didn’t tell anyone that I was coming this way, and they’re all gonna be really mad once they realize that I lied.”

Tilting his head, Julek considered his own medallion. It had been harder to hear since Stegobor had put the dimeritium anklet on him, though he could recall being sleepily guided through some mixtures that had help, and he could still hear humming in the evenings. But it was quieter, like someone had wrapped the sound output in a few layers of linen. The shouts of “Coen” had been the loudest he’d heard it in weeks.

“They’re… displeased,” he decided after a moment. Too many voices, too foggy to  _ really  _ actively pay attention to. “But they’ve been displeased since I killed the teacher, so it’s probably not your fault. I’m sorry.”

Coen moved closer again, placing a hand on Julek’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s alright. They’re not mad at you, I promise. I’ve got my own voices telling me that, because they didn’t know that you couldn’t hear them. You did good, I promise.”

“Okay,” Julek said, shrugging helplessly. He still wasn’t convinced Coen was real, but he was too numb to really worry about that yet. “Tea?” He returned to the task of making tea, because it was an easy routine that always settled him.

The Griffin smiled, but it looked sad. “If you’re willing to offer, I’ll accept it.”

Julek nodded. “Tea is good. Lemon and ginger, willow bark and lavender instead of valerian.” A small igni to heat the water, and he hardly winced as the anklet burned his skin. He poured the slurry into two cups, added an extra dash of lavender to his own, and motioned to Coen to take the second cup before he wandered over to his cot with his tea. “Goodnight, Coen the Griffin.”

* * *

Old Keldar was  _ not _ impressed when Vesemir, Merten, and two sorceresses wandered into his office well after midnight. But he had to suppose that it wasn’t technically their fault. It could have been any of them to have their child of surprise kidnapped by Stregobor, it had just been extreme misfortune that it had happened to be Merten’s.

What he really wanted to know was how and why Coen had decided he was going to be the one to rescue the poor rascal. But that would be a question for when he returned. No sense in interrupting his rescue before it could properly start, after all.

Except that didn’t explain why there were two bedraggled school leaders and two disheveled sorceresses in his office at- he checked the time candle he was still burning. Two o’clock in the morning. “If it has to do with Coen and Julian, I don’t want to know.” He was aware enough that Coen had told at least a few lies in his preparations, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know  _ all  _ the details. 

“Your pupil has just turned an incredibly difficult situation into one which is nearly twice as dangerous, for both himself and for Julian.” Vesemir was fuming, but Keldar didn’t show any outward reactions.

For  _ years _ , Merten, Vesemir, and Guxart had been bemoaning the dangers that Julian was in, yet they had done nothing to attempt to save the boy. Though he had no claim to him, and no reason to care about the situation, beyond that of Coen’s safety, even he had to admit that it was well past time that someone had even  _ tried _ .

“Coen is a smart lad,” he finally settled on, schooling his expression to that of a calm indifference. “I’m certain that he’ll do what is needed to keep them both safe.” And maybe even finally bring the child home. He may not have had a claim on the child, but it was well known that those in the school of the Griffin excelled in greater magical talents than most of the other schools, with a few notable exceptions.

Vesemir scowled. “Have you really forgotten what Stregobor did to us all those years ago? Julian has been protected thus far by his youth, but have you no concern for what Stregobor might decide to do to  _ Coen  _ when he discovers another full fledged Witcher right under his roof?”

The accusation had Keldar’s anger building, and he fought hard to keep it under control. Griffins may not form packs as Wolves did, but that was not to say that they weren’t deeply territorial, or that they took well to blatant insults. “I would watch my words carefully, if I were you. Each and every one of my students have trained for years to do the same work that Coen is, even if the circumstances are typically different. I will not stand idly by as you see fit to attack the skills and planning of my student. Coen has chosen to act where the four of you and Guxart have chosen to wait. If you have come into my office with nothing but accusations and blame, then by all means  _ get out _ . Unless you actually had something useful to add?”

The four of them seemed at a loss and after a moment, finally left.

Keldar rolled his eyes. All bluster about nothing of importance. Same old, same old. But, the conversation had informed him that what he had been waiting for, and the reason he was still in his office, had occurred. So he moved to lock his office door, sturdy enough that it would likely withstand more than a strong aard, and returned to his desk.

He set his medallion on the table and held it with both hands. He closed his eyes, and meditated on the feel of the living silver under his fingers. The basic symbol of every Witcher, but more than that, a means to connect them all.  _ “Coen, _ ” he called mentally.

In his mind, he could see Coen, sitting at a small table, as he sipped at a glass of tea.  _ “I’m here,” _ he responded, a quiet whisper in the back of his mind.  _ “Julian is asleep, at least for the moment. He seemed to think that I wasn’t real.” _

The response was quieter than Keldar had expected, but close proximity to dimeritium had strange effects that could not be predicted. They were lucky that they could hear each other at all.  _ “Possibly a by-product of the anklet, or some other result of half a life of isolation. Is he well, beyond that shackle?” _

_ “I haven’t seen the anklet yet, but the use of an igni caused a distinct smell of burnt flesh in what I would assume to be the proximity of it. Keldar, what do you smell in the tea? Besides lemon, ginger, willow bark, and lavender.”  _ Coen lifted the cup and inhaled deeply, focusing on the scent so strongly that Keldar could catch it.

Keldar was expecting the scent to be at least partially muted, in the same way that Coen’s voice was quieter than he expected. What he was not expecting was for the scent of  _ valerian  _ to be overpowering. So much so he could barely pick out the other scents Coen had seemed sure of being present.  _ “Is he trying to knock you unconscious? Or himself? That can’t be a recommended dose.” _

_ “If the vial hadn’t already been empty when he greeted me, I’m sure he would have added another dose to the water.” _

Keldar frowned, trying to understand what was happening. They all knew that being in Ban Ard was not an enjoyable experience, even when one wasn’t subject to torture, but for Julian to be so desperate for a moment’s respite that he would rather drug himself into oblivion said far more about the conditions within the school than any realized. If he didn’t know any better, he’d almost wonder if Julian was trying to find a way to sleep so deeply, he would not wake again.  _ “We can not allow him to remain there any longer, if it is at all within our power to free him.”  _ With a sigh, he prepared himself for the backlash that was certain to come, should anything go wrong.  _ “Coen, you have my full permission to do whatever it takes to free Julian, and take him to safety. Any means you see fit to accomplish your task, any act you deem necessary, you will have my support. Understood?” _

_ “Understood.” _

* * *

“Julian, can you wake up for me?”

Julek blinked. The Griffin Witcher that he was sure he’d dreamed up was hovering over him. “You’re still here.” Perhaps he wasn’t a figment of his imagination after all, then.

“Yes, I am. I’m Coen, of the School of the Griffin. I’m here to help you leave Ban Ard. I can’t imagine it’s enjoyable, being imprisoned here. Triss says the magic suppression anklet you’ve got is nothing shy of torture.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Julek said, but more exhausted than aggressive. “How do you know I don’t deserve it?”

“You’re what, thirteen? I do believe that thirteen year olds can be desperate, but I can’t imagine a scenario in which you’ve done something so monstrous that weeks of wearing dimeritium was a suitable punishment.”

Julek stared at Coen, not sure how the Griffin didn’t see what everyone else was able to. “I’ve killed before, when I was a  _ child _ . I killed my mother’s husband, and the old Manticore, and now I’ve killed someone else. If that doesn’t suggest that I should be punished, what does?” He paused a moment, before looking away, shame rising up within him. “Maybe I am just a monster, like Stregobor thinks. Maybe I’m better off being locked up here, where I can’t hurt anyone else.”

Coen put a hand on Julek’s shoulder. “ Merten’s still alive, I swear. Witchers are hard to kill, Julian. Did you know some of them have regrown certain organs? In any case, you’re not a monster. I’m sorry that you’ve had to kill, but you were defending Merten from your stepfather, and your classmate from your teacher. That takes courage, Julian. You’re not a monster, you were trying to be a hero.”

Julek didn’t know how to feel anymore. He’d been told for so long that he was a monster, and now this Witcher was trying to convince him that he wasn’t? It made no sense, no matter how many times he turned the words over in his head. “I’m not a hero,” he protested, but it sounded weak, even to his own ears. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, though. What could he say? Continuing to argue would just be more trouble than it was worth, anyway, and trying to fight about it would just be even more tiresome.

“Maybe not yet. But you could be, someday. If we left Ban Ard and went someplace safer, for Witchers? Would you want that? Get that anklet off?”

  
That  _ did  _ sound enticing. But there was no way it wasn’t too good to be true. The last time a Witcher had come to retrieve him had  _ not  _ gone well. But at the same time, there was nothing he really wanted more than getting the anklet off. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try. Do we just leave now?” He hadn’t been outside since that fateful day, and even if he just wandered off after Coen got him outside, that would be good enough.

* * *

Julek was unable to leave Ban Ard, and could only watch in growing horror as the doors slammed shut behind Coen, and would not budge for him no matter how many times he screamed Aard at them. The walls of Ban Ard rattled as he screamed himself hoarse, but they would not fall or break.

He was well and truly imprisoned.

Sobs wracked his frame as he shook the doors with exhausted strength. They rattled, but still he could not force them open. Coen was gone, safe, and that was good, but clearly he would die a prisoner here. That would be his fate.

Nothing mattered. Not the blistering and burnt flesh that spider webbed out from around his ankle, not the despair that had settled in his chest, nor the warmth of his amulet that was supposed to comfort him.

It was not a comfort. It was a firm reminder that he had failed the Witchers, and they had failed him.

He fell to his knees, as the realization crashed over him. He was all alone, and he always would be. Even after all this time, after everything he had done to try and escape, or convince them to let him leave, he was still just as trapped as he had been the day he had been brought to Ban Ard.


	4. Chapter 4

"Coen is on his way back to Kaer Morhen, which I suppose is something you lot already know." Keldar leaned against Vesemir's door frame, arms crossed, as he studied the depressed pack.

"I am glad that Coen is safe," Merten said, which was almost more than Keldar had expected from him.

Keldar considered for a moment. He did not have a connection to the boy still trapped in the wall, and Coen had been unable to see for himself what might have happened to him after the doors had slammed so forcefully.

Coen had stayed only long enough to hear as the child had screamed Witcher destruction signs at the doors with growing desperation. Heartbreaking, but Coen had finally been persuaded to return. They did not have the means to break the kind of enchantment clearly preventing the boy from leaving the building.

"Will Julian suffer any consequences for Coen's presence and escape?" Keldar asked after a moment. He didn't really care, not when Vesemir and the others had only lamented Julian's kidnapping and had done nothing, but he was curious now about how well founded their fears had been.

"Stregobor has decided that Julian's attempt at wanton destruction of school property should be punished severely in the way most fitting a Witcher's Child of Surprise."

  
Keldar swallowed. He  _ knew _ what that meant. Vesemir's worst fears fulfilled.

* * *

"Julek, what is all this commotion you're causing? The other students have been complaining this entire wing has been shaking for hours."

Julek shook, his anger building as he turned to face the one who had been behind his suffering. “What did you do?” He whispered, hands balling into fists, as he rushed towards Stregobor, fully intent on attacking the Mage. “What did you do to me?! Let me go!”

Moments before his blow could land though, he found himself frozen in place, entirely incapable of movement.

"Much better," Stregobor said. "Let's see. It would be so easy to kill you like this. I could simply tell you to stop breathing, and you would be dead before I count to five hundred. But that would be wasteful. You're a nuisance, but you're still a Child of Destiny. You're what, thirteen? That's a good age. Much more convenient than seven. Almost too old, in fact. But that's okay. You're the perfect test subject for my newest formula to create a Witcher. Several hundred years ago we came up with seven successful variations of mutagens to create seven schools, but I never successfully finished my last version before they got too full of themselves and revolted, killing most of my colleagues who worked with me on creating the Witchers. But that was no great loss, because I believe I have finally finished my life's work, and you, Julek, are going to be the first Witcher of my new school. School of the Dragon. Do you know how hard it is to get dragon blood? Wolves, cats, bears, vipers, cranes, those are easy. Manticores and Griffins are slightly more challenging. But a dragon? It has taken me three hundred years to kill a dragon and finish my recipe. Come along, now, I can't  _ wait _ to give you this taste of the Trial of the Grasses."

Against his will, Julek found himself following Stregobor's giddy pace to his laboratory at the top of the highest tower in Ban Ard.

Moments after entering the laboratory, Julek found himself sitting on a table, holding a very golden vial.

"I would enjoy forcing this down your gullet myself, but I'm going to have even more fun watching you choke it down with no resistance.  _ Drink _ ,  _ Julian De Lettenhove. _ "

There was no resisting. He lifted the vial to his mouth, and drank it like a dehydrated man drinks water. It hit his tongue like hot iron, a metallic taste that burned like hot embers all the way down.

He could not scream, for he would drown.

The empty vial fell from his hand, shattering on the floor. And then there was nothing.

* * *

Triss was going to wear a hole in Vesemir's floor, he just knew it. 

They hadn’t been able to see all of what had happened, hadn’t been able to hear Stregobor’s gloating over what he intended to do to Julian, but what they had heard was more than enough for all of them.

_ School of the fucking dragon.  _ Whatever it was that Stregobor was planning, Vesemir was nearly certain that it would kill Julian.

Not only was the boy too old, too grown for the mutagens to take effect safely, but it was an entirely untested formula, with no guarantee of safety or effectiveness.

There was a reason why the Witchers had revolted against the mages that had created them. It wasn’t because they wanted a way to reverse what had been done to them, or because they had wanted revenge against the ones who had twisted them into something closer to monsters than humans. It had been because  _ children _ had been dying for the sake of experimentation, that they had acted. 

Witchers were not monsters, and they did not purposefully hurt children any more than they could help. Witchers were made to hunt monsters, and so they had risen up against the monsters shaped like men and monsters shaped like mages who were killing  _ their _ children. 

And now, because of their own inaction, yet another of their children was in danger, and there was nothing that any of them could do to even begin to attempt to save him. Julian was too far out of their reach, blockaded behind barriers of stone and magic that did not want Julian to leave, and surrounded by dozens of mages, each of which was fanatical enough to defend Stregobor to their final breath.

As much as Vesemir hated to admit it, Keldar had been right. They should have acted far sooner, before Coen had seen fit to attempt the rescue on his own, before Stregobor had decided to use Julian as his test subject, and before he had even considered using something as devastating as Axii on a child _. _

But they had not, and now they could only wait as Julian laid unconscious, strapped to a table, screaming in pain as his body worked to metabolize an experimental trial of grasses that should have never existed.

* * *

Everything hurt, from the tips of his ears to the end of his toes, so Julek did the only thing he could do. He meditated until everything was gone, save for the medallion pulsing around his neck. It was whistling with a frequency he had never heard before, so it was easy to allow it to encompass his entire being until it was the only thing in the whole world.

Eventually, though he couldn’t tell how long it was, the whistling slowly started to change, until it almost started to sound like a melody.

_ "Hello?"  _ Was he not alone in the vast emptiness that was medallion? How could someone else be in there?

The melody ceased.  _ "Vesemir! He's awake!" _

Julek couldn't see anything in the abyss of the medallion, but he focused on where the voice seemed to be emanating from until the image cleared.

A room full of Witchers. Three men and two women. Except one of the men didn't have a medallion. He didn't need it though, because Julek recognized him as the Witcher who had come to retrieve him.  _ The one he had killed. _

_ "Am I dead? Are you all dead? Where am I?" _

There was a hushed whisper that he couldn’t make out, before the same voice that seemed to create the melody spoke again.  _ “You’re not dead, though you’ve come close several times. We aren’t dead either. As for where you are, I’d assume that you’re still within Ban Ard, though Stregobor has been known to use multiple different locations for his different experiments.” _

_ "No."  _ Julek spoke carefully, not sure how to explain.  _ "You lot aren't in Ban Ard. There's no Witchers in Ban Ard. Where are  _ we. _ " _

There were more whispers, before another voice spoke.  _ “You are in Ban Ard, but you’re correct that we aren’t. What is likely happening is that you meditated to escape the pain of what is happening to you, and as a result, you are more connected to the medallion that you wear, causing you to see us through it.” _

They were avoiding telling him where they were. But he knew why. He understood it. If Stregobor took it from his mind, he could find them, and he couldn't let that happen.

He hummed the broken melody from the medallion that had brought him comfort over the years. What else was there to say? He might not even remember this once he came back to himself. And even if he did, would he even  _ want _ to remember any of this?

Even though he couldn’t feel it at the moment, the pain was still there, waiting for him to lose the concentration on the amulet so it could take over again.

_ “How long?”  _ he asked.  _ “The Trial of the Grasses is a longstanding Witcher tradition, right? How long does it take to recover?” _

There was a sharp inhale, but he couldn’t pinpoint who made it. They were getting fuzzier, harder to see clearly. He could only concentrate so strongly on them for so long.

_ “Those who awaken always do so on the third day. You may or may not be awake yet, but you are here and that’s a good sign. The pain will lessen over time, but listen. Listen, Julian. Listen. You’re going to be different. Your senses are going to be stronger. You’ll hear things from ten stories down, and see in colors you never knew existed. You’ll be able to smell things so much more strongly. What people feel, whether or not they’re lying. It’s going to be confusing, but we’ll help you.” _

_ “He’s fading, if anyone has anything they need to say, do it now, before he’s gone again.” _

The edges of his vision were dimming, becoming swallowed by darkness that was quickly spreading to the rest of his awareness. But through the suffocating darkness, a voice called out. One that he had heard before, long ago.

One that he thought he would never hear again.

_ “Julian, you may not remember me, but my name is Merten. I was the Witcher that came to your home, all those years ago. You didn’t kill me, I promise. If I had acted quicker, none of this would have ever happened to you. You would have been raised in a safe, welcoming environment, surrounded by those who love you. I wasn’t able to save you then, but I swear that I will find a way to save you now. Just rest, we’ll come for you as soon as we can. I swear.” _

He wanted to believe the words, wanted to believe that he hadn’t killed the Witcher, but whatever connection he had to the medallion, and the Witchers beyond, failed.

He was completely enveloped in darkness and pain, and he knew nothing else.

* * *

Julek woke cold. Not cold like the shade of a fall day. Cold that burned, like being submerged in an icy lake for three hours. It was a cold long settled into his bones.

Julek somehow managed to get his eyes to open. They were a sticky mess, but he could almost make out the haze of the room.

It was dark with a complete absence of light, and yet despite that he could make out more than just the distinct shape of Stregobor's laboratory.

There were no windows, so it was impossible to guess what time of day it was, or if it was day at all. And worse still, impossible to gauge how long he'd been here.

It was quiet. Even the medallion seemed to have taken a break from humming. Perhaps waiting on bated breath.

"Good, morning?" he said, hesitantly, turning the amulet around in his hands. "Is it morning?"

The amulet made several different noises in response. The loudest was a surprised chuckle that shifted into a wry,  _ "Yes, actually. If four in the morning is morning." _

Underneath that was a lower voice, that sounded further away.  _ "You're alive," _ relieved and worried and pleased.

Julek wasn't sure what to say to that. Maybe he was supposed to know that his Witchers wanted him to live and thrive but it was new.

His parents hadn't cared if he lived, and Stregobor certainly would prefer his death via experimentation. And nobody else in Ban Ard even remembered he existed.

He sat up slowly, and was pleased that his body only protested with minor aches and stiffness, but it reminded him how unbearably cold he felt. So cold it burned.

"I'm cold," he said, feeling the need to verbalize it for the medallion.

_ "Unusual." _

_ "But not unheard of here in the mountains." _

_ "Julian, do you see a fireplace you can safely cast an igni on?" _

_ "He might be too weak for an igni. Maybe he should eat first." _

_ "Food or fire first, Julian? You pick." _

Julek considered. He was hungry, but it would be easier to search Stregobor's laboratory if there was more light, and being warmer would also make that a more enjoyable experience.

He found the fireplace. There was no wood or paper or coal in the fireplace, just a circle of bricks designed to contain the fire. Only the ashy remains of an old fire long burned out.

"Fire, first," Julek decided, studying the fireplace and reaching to gauge the temperature of the ash.

Icy cold, which was even colder than he was expecting it to be. "Would a magical fire burn even if there is no fuel to feed it?" Julek asked. He was sure there was a mage lesson there, something about chaos requiring an equal exchange to maintain balance, but he was too tired, cold, to remember it.

_ "Igni is a Witcher sign, which is different from the spells mages and sorceresses use that require balance. It might catch. It might not." _

_ "Bricks don't generally catch fire, though." _

Julek wondered if he should ask their advice on whether he should try to start a fire with what was in the fireplace or look for something flammable, but they had devolved into a quarrel on the flammability of bricks and whether his igni would be strong enough to melt something usually unmeltable.

It would be fun to try, he supposed. Especially if it worked. But he was tired and cold and he didn't have the energy to listen to their quibbling.

So he walked over to Stregobor's desk.

There were papers everywhere. Experiments written out in elaborate detail, recipes for endless potions. On and on. Files on Witchers and monsters and students at Ban Ard. And then of course there was the paper with his name on it, and the recipe for the Witcher trial made with dragon blood.

His name wasn't the only name. The only attempt to make a Witcher from this last School. But it was the last name in a list of dead and Julek's vision darkened with his anger. He picked up every last piece of paper he could find in or around the desk, including all of Stregobor's journals and books, and carried them over to the fireplace.

_ "Julian, what are you doing?" _

"Igni!"

There was a burst of fire from his hand, and the pages burst into bright flames in shades of red and blue that he had never seen before. And the bricks singed, themselves seeming to almost droop around the edges.

The warmth chased the chill from his bones and he purred as it eased the stiffness in his joints. Julek might have stood there all day, except one of the voices said,  _ "You need to eat, Julian." _

Julek found jerky, dried fruit, and stale bread to snack on and listened as the Witchers gave the first lesson of Witchering.

Meditation.

* * *

Meditation was not usually the first lesson given after the Trial of Grasses. The formative years before the first trial were spent on basic weapons training and book learning. Sword fighting, languages, rote memorization of botany and beastieries. And, just a touch of meditation, and potions making.

Witchers in training were not supposed to be capable of magic, and as such, learned no magic before taking the Trial of Grasses, which for some reason gave Witchers a very limited and specific capacity for casting six specific signs. Griffin witchers learned slightly more magic than that, but not a lot. So before the trials their focus was on learning physical skills and receiving a basic education.

Since Stregobor had kidnapped Julian, Merten’s child of surprise had received a magic specific education, and not one that had covered something as physical as sword fighting, and though there would be many things they would be able to teach him through the medallion, sword fighting would not be one of them. Therefore, they would likely need to write an entirely new syllabus for Julian’s education. They had left him to his own devices for too long. War would come to Ban Ard and Stregobor, and Julian would have to be given whatever means to protect himself that they could.

So they started by teaching him meditation. The risk of a newly mutated Witcher losing control of their emotions and going berserk was high enough that they taught meditation prior to giving students the trail of the grasses so that they would have a better chance of calming themselves and using it as a healthy coping mechanism when they were overwhelmed by their increased senses.

They had all seen what Julian had done to Stregobor’s office. It was completely reasonable for Julian to be angry at his situation. It wasn’t fair what Stregobor had done to him, and against his consent. There was nothing wrong with him being a little angry, but that didn’t mean they weren’t concerned about the potential for Julian losing control. They worried about it in a lot of those they trained.

So they would teach Julian meditation, and hope that would be enough.

* * *

The second lesson Julek learned from the medallion was accidentally his own invention.

_ “Did Coen make it home okay?”  _ Julek had asked one day during meditation. That seemed so long ago that it was almost like Coen’s entire existence had been nothing more than a figment of his imagination, except once or twice he’d heard them talking about the Griffin.

_ “He did,”  _ they assured him.  _ “He’s been running the walls every day since he got back.” _

He understood the context enough to know that it was some kind of punishment, and possibly a training exercise, but nothing beyond that. “Does that mean using Aard to climb a vertical surface?”

_ “No, no. Running the walls means running around the perimeter of the castle. It is good for improving stamina and discouraging shenanigans. But that description sounds like a good training exercise too. Use Aard to ascend the center of one of those staircases without touching the walls, and running down the stairs if you do? I’d like to see you try it.” _

So he learned to climb the staircase using Aard. It was hard, but one benefit to undergoing the mutations was that the anklet of dimeritium no longer caused him so much physical pain. He still suffered mild nausea and decreased ability to use magic, but those could be ignored or suffered through.

In the evenings while he rested but before sleeping, they taught him other things that witchers needed to know about monsters and geography and culture. The Witchers were a people, and he was one of them.

* * *

Geralt was in his late twenties when Eskel said he had to go fetch his child of surprise because she was in danger. The draw of destiny was supposedly so strong that before claiming their children of surprise, they could feel them wherever they might be. A pull so strong that they could use it to find them.

That clearly hadn’t fit with Merten’s experience with the young Julian, but Geralt didn’t ask stupid questions. Coen running the walls for weeks after returning from a poorly thought out attempt at rescuing Merten’s child of surprise from Ban Ard was lesson enough for the rest of them.

Eskel had been in Geralt’s year of training, and while they had been the closest of any two classmates, his brother hadn’t really talked about the hunt that had ended with him getting a child of surprise. Eskel hadn’t been alone, either, because it had been their second season as full witchers,  _ the year of Coen’s stunt _ , so they had each traveled with a seasoned Witcher of their own.

That didn’t clarify why it was Eskel’s child of surprise, and nobody had elaborated, so that was just a Thing.

Geralt’s math suggested the child of surprise was probably twelve, but Eskel had also failed to elaborate on what kind of danger she was in. Just that she was in danger, and that he and Coen should accompany him on this daring rescue.

Coen was invited because he still wasn’t trusted not to try to break into Ban Ard again so he had to be supervised, and nobody wanted Eskel going alone to fetch his child of surprise after Stregobor had kidnapped Merten’s child of surprise.

  
There was  _ Power _ in children of surprise. And  _ Power  _ in those born under a total eclipse. Everyone knew the Brotherhood of Sorcerers sought greater power.

* * *

Blaviken was a long time coming. Mages, Witchers, and children born under a total eclipse all in one place was a volatile combination that could only end in heartbreak and disaster.

Enter stage left, Deidre and Renfri. Two unrelated twelve year old princesses from two different countries, with a shared birthday. Born under a cursed black sun, locked in towers, and raised to believe they were less than human.

The mages wanted their hearts, led them to believe they were monsters and persecuted them as such when they made the attempt to defend themselves from physical harm. So they ran, forearmed with the knowledge that Witcher Kaedwen would not allow them to be harmed.

Enter stage right, three Witchers, still young, making haste to rescue a child of surprise from an unspecified danger.

And enter a handful of mages doing Stregobor’s bidding, for Stregobor could not leave Julek unsupervised in Ban Ard. “Bring me the bodies of the girls, prepared for autopsy. And send me the Witchers sent to help them, unharmed.”

Five mages against three witchers is not a fair fight. Especially when there were innocents to protect.

It was mostly luck or their inexplicable immunity to magic that allowed Deidre and Renfri to make their escape. But Geralt was distracted enough by what Renfri had said when she had gone into a trance that the mages were able to corner him.

"Your legacies await you in the woods, Geralt. The price shall be suffering, a threefold of agonies as seemingly unending and sprawling as the sea. But the reward will make it worth it, reaped for generations of  _ your  _ people."

"What legacies?" Eskel had asked as they had all stared in shock at the girl, little more than a child.

"An amulet of dimeritium, and a cloak of the royalest blue."

They all knew about Merten's Julian; the boy who was stolen by mages, forced to fend for himself in the most hostile territory that there ever had been, and experimented upon by the worst of the worst mages. Everyone knew that he’d been chained by an anklet of dimeritium, a torture worse than any other for anyone with any scrap of magical talent. Add in that Julian was a Child of Surprise, and depending on if you listened to the rumors, possibly even the child of a witcher, and it made sense that he would fit into that prophecy.

But a cloak of royalest blue? Blue dye was expensive and hard to come by so it was favored by wealthy merchants and royalty, and sometimes just a few bolts were sent to Kaer Morhen in tribute, but rarely.

But an entire cloak that color?

Undoubtedly it was referring to someone's princess.

Not that any of them could recall anyone taking on contracts that would grant them the favor of royals, but there was no time to consider it, as the mages took their chance, and the world fell into madness.

There was little more than enough time for Eskel to urge the girls to run. Coen went straight for a Quen, casting the shield that would give the girls a running head start and the Witchers a moment to get their wits about them.

Eskel had the strongest Signs of any Wolf ever and Coen was of the more magically gifted Griffins.

But melee was Geralt's strength and attacking them head on wasn't really a very good idea even if he hadn't still been distracted by the prophecy.

The Witchers lessons had included the fact that the best weapon against a hostile mage was a dimeritium bomb, but that wasn't in the standard Witcher kit.

Maybe it should have been, with hostilities between mages and Witchers at an all time high. The kidnapping of their Children of Surprise was an act of war.

But it wasn't.

And the mages did what they did best.

With Coen and Eskel unreachable behind a wall of Quen and the girls untraceable, and Geralt attacking them within arm's reach, they made the strategically advantageous decision.

They made a portal, and took Geralt with them.


	5. Chapter 5

Julek felt as if he was drifting through a dream.

He’d been doing…. Something, but he couldn’t remember what, when Stregobor had come to rescue him. He’d been doing something dangerous, though, Very Dangerous for Young Apprentices, Stregobor had said, after he’d done something to stop him. Something to keep him safe. Stregobor was worried that someone was going to come and steal him away from where he was safe. Nowhere else could protect him, and only Stregobor was strong enough to keep him hidden from the ones who wanted to hurt him.

His ankle was throbbing, but it didn’t matter too much. It was the price for the protection he needed, especially when those who wanted to take him away had already found ways to infiltrate his home.

He couldn’t remember who would want to take him away from Ban Ard, and he couldn’t remember how they had already gotten in or if he had met them. He couldn’t remember much of anything, really, but that was ok.

He was Stregobor’s precious Julek, and he was safe from himself now, safe from doing those terribly dangerous things.

Julek wasn’t entirely sure where he was exactly, beyond the fact that he was safe inside the walls of Ban Ard. Everything felt muted, even, or perhaps especially, his senses. There were a handful, perhaps a dozen, of suppressed voices that he seemed to be unable to rid himself of. They were too inaudible to converse with, but entirely omnipresent regardless of what he did.

Perhaps Stregobor was protecting him from them even though the great mage had been unable to mute them entirely. Despite that, something deep in his gut said that he should not tell Stregobor that they were there. Something far far deeper than the urge to trust Stregobor with his entire being.

There was screaming, and then he ran into a tree.

No, not a tree, a person. Someone he’d never seen before, staring down at him in confusion.

The man had the longest and whitest hair Julek had ever seen, and his slitted amber wolf’s eyes were in starkest contrast to his brow crinkled with confusion. And then there was the medallion the same size as his own, so carefully depicting a gallant wolf.

“ _Oh_ ,” he breathed. It was easy in that moment to see what Stregobor had claimed to be protecting him from, but the fog in his mind seemed to be melting because he could remember, now, what had only been hidden from his mind for at most, a week. “Hello there, most beautiful Witcher.”

The Witcher, who couldn’t possibly be but more than a few years older than him, blinked in continued confusion. “Hmm.” A moment passed, before he spoke again. "Are you alright?"

Julek grinned. "I should be asking you that! You smell like heroics and heartbreak and destiny!"

The Witcher's brow crinkled with greater confusion. He tilted his head, seemingly listening to something Julek couldn't hear. "I'm Geralt," he said, finally. "And you're Julian, right?"

Julek shrugged. "So the Witchers say. Stregobor calls me Julek and no one else calls me much of anything. Are they saying much of anything to you?"

"They would like to know how you're feeling. Apparently you've been sleepwalking for days."

He winced. "Stregobor's Axii, or something close enough to it. He caught me practicing signs and magic, and he wanted to stop me.”

Geralt nodded slightly, in understanding. “That man is far closer to a monster than anything that take on contracts for. His only pleasure is in control, and he will do anything to ensure that nothing comes between him and that which he sees as worthy of his attentions.”

Julek sighed. He knew that what Geralt was saying was the truth, that there had been no reason for Stregobor to have done any of what he had. There had been no reason for him to have kidnapped a child, there was no reason for mutating him into some new type of Witcher. Hell, there had been no reason to create Witchers as a whole. Not when the price had been so steep, and the risks so great. Not when the only ones he’d deemed worthy of such a drastic change had been _children_.

And yet, there was still some small part of him that felt almost guilty for such thoughts. 

The Axii was gone for the moment, but that didn't mean the compulsion to appreciate Stregobor's genius had entirely vanished. It made him feel sick to know the intrusive thoughts wouldn't leave so easily.

He sighed again, and shook his head. "And you? Are you alright? I can't begin to imagine what Stregobor might have done to you, but it can't have been pleasant."

"Hmm," was all Geralt had to say on the matter.

But there was something else, something, deeper. A voice, but not from the medallion, and not a pleasant one. _But don't you remember, dear Julek? You were there._

He didn't want to remember, didn't try. It was easier to believe he'd been wandering aimlessly under Stregobor's spell than to question what actions he might have committed or endured. "Stregobor may have wisened up since then, but once, Coen walked right out the front door of Ban Ard. Want to give it a go?"

"Why not," Geralt agreed.

* * *

"Geralt underwent a second trial of the grasses, and Julian has no natural resistance to Axii. He doesn't even remember what he witnessed."

"Axii doesn't typically work on Witchers."

"Those who mix the formulas for the trials never try, either. It would be unethical." It would make sense for there to be a bond formed between the one who mixed the mutagens and the ones who drank, but to experiment with that would be Monstrous and the Witchers would not play with the hypocrisy. They were the hunters of monsters, they would not, could not be, monsters themselves. People might have treated them as such for generations, but they would not lower themselves to such levels. They would not.

They were better than that, and they would show the world.

* * *

Julek could not approach the exit of Ban Ard, for all that he tried. The anklet had seemed to become a vice grip, and he could not move any closer to the door once he was within ten feet. It was as though there was a brick wall blocking his path, or too short a chain leash he could not break. 

"Julian? Aren't you coming?" Geralt was halfway between Julek and the door, and was looking over his shoulder to see what was holding the mage Witcher back.

Julek moved his untethered ankle forward a step, and tried desperately to pull his shackled ankle forward but it would not move.

He inhaled in a failing attempt to shove the rising panic back down. This wasn't about him, he should have guessed Stregobor would add to whatever he'd done to keep him from escaping. This was about getting Geralt out of Ban Ard before Stregobor could continue whatever research he was conducting now.

The door didn't open for Geralt. The Witcher shoved his weight against it but it would not budge. It was locked, just as it had been for Julek when it had closed behind Coen. After a few minutes, Geralt turned back towards Julek, an odd, nearly panicked look on his face. “Are there any other doors to the outside that you know of?”

Nervous at the thought of the full rage of a Witcher directed towards him, Julek tried his best to stay calm, even as he knew his voice shook. “Not that I’ve seen in all the time I’ve been here. Everyone uses these doors, or a portal.”

He tried, and failed, to take another step forward. He considered the doors. Julek had never learned to cast a portal, but he wondered if that could possibly be the key. The thought came that it might not work, that he might be trapped forever, but he shoved it away, burying it as deeply as he could. He couldn’t risk showing any weakness, especially when he didn’t know if the Witcher was going to turn hostile towards him.”For what it’s worth, I’m sorry the door won’t open.”

Geralt considered him. “Hm.”

The Witcher didn’t _seem_ angry, Julek decided. That was good.

“We can’t continue standing here,” Geralt said after shaking the door again would not open it. “It’s too open.”

“I have a room,” Julek said after a moment. “Nobody will bother you there.” Whatever spell Stregobor had cast, nobody other than the Witchers and Stregobor ever acknowledged his existence. He wondered at the fact that for some reason, it had not worked on Coen, those in the amulet, or on Geralt.

* * *

It had been nearly two weeks since Julek had ran into Geralt, and while he was still waiting for something to go horribly wrong, with the most likely situation being the Witcher becoming impatient and taking out his frustration at being trapped on Julek, he had to admit that it hadn’t been all bad.

The Witcher had proven himself to be an easy distraction from the never ending monotony of his daily life. Once Stregobor had decided that it would be more beneficial to whatever it was about them that he was studying to allow them more freedoms and observe from afar, they would meet in the library, and spend most of the day there. From there, Julek had begun his research, looking for any information that would possibly help him learn to create a portal, while also being careful to not be too obvious about it. Geralt, for his part, was looking for a different kind of information, but Julek wasn’t about to ask what it was.

This evening, though, they took the opportunity to relax, at least for a moment.

Somehow, they had ended up talking about their lives. Well, Geralt was doing most of the talking, and Julek was trying not to make a fool of himself through his lack of knowledge of the world outside the walls of Ban Ard.

“Now, Lambert is a little shit, but he’s still a pretty good guy,” Geralt was explaining, perched atop a table, the bowls still filled with the remnants of their dinner next to him, as he smiled softly. “He’s like the kid brother that always annoys you, but you still let tag along with you and your friends anyway, because you would feel bad for him otherwise. Especially since he’s head over heels for his best friend. Poor bastard.”

“I wouldn’t know how that feels,” Julek sighed, glancing towards the floor. He didn’t know why he suddenly felt so inclined to share details about his life with Geralt, especially as he hadn’t known him for long, but he did. “I don’t have any siblings. Or, I don’t think I do, at least. I didn’t have any before I came here, but that was a very long time ago. Things easily could have changed since then.”

“Oh?” Julek looked up again, and saw a slight frown on Geralt’s face. “I was under the impression that mages did not have their conduit moments until they were into their teenage years, and you seem to be reaching adulthood, if you haven't already.”

It was Julek’s turn to frown, as he suddenly grew nervous. He didn’t know why, it wasn’t as if he’d never told anyone about his past, but for some reason, he was almost scared of the possibility of Geralt reacting badly. Somehow, Geralt had become important to him, in a way that he couldn’t describe, and didn’t understand.

But, as terrifying as the thought of telling Geralt about the darkness in his past was, the thought of no one ever knowing, never understanding, was even worse.

And so, he found himself taking a breath to steady himself. “Most mages are teenagers,” he agreed, fighting to keep his voice from shaking as he continued. “But some are younger. The sooner the conduit moment, the stronger the mage.”

With a final breath, he forced the words out, fighting past the fear of rejection. “I had just turned seven years old the week before mine. I am the youngest recorded conduit moment in history, according to the records within both Ban Ard and Aratuza.”

There was a moment of silence, before Julek could hear Geralt take a shuddering breath. “What happened? I don’t doubt that such a thing would be difficult upon one so young.”

Julek froze.

Only one other person knew what had happened that day, and it was the one who had stolen him, and permanently altered the path that Destiny had set for him. He’d never told anyone the full story, not even Coen, and the Witchers in the medallion had never mentioned it either.

And yet, some part of him wanted to tell Geralt. He wanted to finally be able to tell someone, and he felt that Geralt would be willing to listen.

“When I was born, my mother was alone.” He started, voice shaking as he tried to recall his own history. “My father was away, battling some uncertain foe, when his life was saved by a Witcher. As he had no coin, but being unwilling to leave the Witcher without payment for what he had done, my father offered him the law of surprise.”

Geralt hummed softly. “And that surprise was you.”

Julek nodded. “It was me.” He paused then, taking a moment to gather his thoughts, before continuing. “Unfortunately, my father wasn’t as lucky in the next battle, and he never returned. My mother remarried, in an attempt to give me a better life, but she had underestimated how seriously my stepfather took blood relation, and before I was seven, he was already seeking out ways to be rid of me. Including selling me to the highest bidding mage.”

Geralt took a sharp breath, but Julek didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. “A week after my seventh birthday, there was a knock at the door. A Witcher, looking for my father, to collect the payment owed to him by way of the law of surprise. Even though my stepfather had been trying to get rid of me for months by that point, he wasn’t willing to let the Witcher take me. Probably because he wouldn’t get paid, the bastard.”

“What happened?”

The question was soft, but it nearly broke Julek’s resolve. The memories were so close, so vivid, it almost felt as if it had happened a week ago, not more than a decade in the past. “They were arguing. The Witcher claiming me by right, my stepfather demanding payment. He was unarmed, and my stepfather was right there, sword raised.” Bile rose in his throat, and he wasn’t sure he could continue, but Geralt was reaching for his hand, offering tactile comfort, and he took it. He didn’t deserve it, but selfishly, he _craved_ it. “I was overtaken by this _compulsion_ to shout something. I thought I was helping the Witcher.”

“What was it? That word?” 

Geralt’s eyes had widened, just a bit, but he didn’t seem all surprised when Julek’s soft spoken answer was, “Aard.” Julek sobbed, choking out a quiet, “A witcher sign that felled them both.”

“The sign alone should not have felled either of them,” Geralt muttered, and Julek’s sobs grew harsher, as the moment everything had gone wrong played in his mind, as if he were living that moment again.

“They fell,” he was barely managing to speak, but he _needed_ Geralt to know. “Down the stairs, toward the crypt, and… Their necks were broken.” An injury fatal to most of the humans who suffered it. A Witcher? Maybe, maybe not. Julek hadn’t believed Coen’s belief that the Witcher was alive. Couldn’t believe that the whisper he’d heard through the Medallion had been real.

Geralt didn’t pull away from Julek, and that, more than anything, was what led to the mage pulling Geralt’s hand up to the medallion he kept hidden under his shirt. “I stole his medallion.” It was clearly a Manticore Medallion. It could have been mistaken for nothing else.

"You’re Merten's child of surprise," Geralt said, nearly breathless, as if it were an earth-shattering realization. "Merten survived that Aard. He tells the story every year, the child of surprise who stole his medallion and was kidnapped by mages. I could show you? That's magic you can do, right?"

Julek sobbed. He hadn't believed Coen, hadn’t even believed his own hearing, but if Geralt was offering… would it hurt to take a peek? "Focus on the memory," he said. "And then imagine you're showing it to me, like you might show me a rock."

Geralt closed his eyes, and after a moment, Julek closed his own and reached for Geralt's mind with his chaos.

_There was a weight on Geralt's being that he found both familiar and comforting. Eskel and Lambert were lying on top of him and each other, as if they were a pile of wiggling puppies. It was a comfortable warmth on this chilly night._

_Geralt was lying in the optimal position to look at the stars overhead, not a cloud in sight. In front of them, the adults, Vesemir, Guxart, and Merten, were sitting closer to the fire. The wolf medallion around Vesemir's neck, and the cat medallion around Guxart's, glowed in the firefight. The absence of a medallion around Merten's neck was just as striking._

_Julek might have gasped if he'd been able, because Merten looked just as he remembered the Old Manticore looking in Lettenhove, minus the medallion he wasn't wearing now, or the soft smirk he did._

_"Why haven't you replaced your medallion, Merten?" Eskel asked from somewhere above Geralt's right ear._

_"Why would I?" Merten asked. "I think my Child of Surprise won it fair and square."_

_Vesemir groaned, and Guxart laughed._

_"Tell the story again!" Lambert, the asshole, pleaded. Geralt knew he was egging Merten on just to get a rise out of Vesemir. Even though becoming a Witcher wasn't Lambert's only choice in life, though he'd decided he would, for some reason he'd never really forgiven the old wolf for saving his father, despite also taking him away from there with the same action._

_Vesemir and Guxart were the only fathers Geralt could remember, and he didn't think the old wolf deserved Lambert's prickliness._

_"So I decided that it was time to see about retrieving my Surprise from Lettenhove. A few years had passed, and I knew it was going to be a child, and I always wait a few years, see, let the kid grow up a little bit. It's easier to give them a choice if they're capable of communicating with you."_

_Merten looked purposefully away from Geralt. Geralt_ knew _that it wasn't his fault he'd just been left in the middle of a road for Vesemir to find, but that didn't mean it didn't still hurt that his mom would just do that with no explanation to anyone. They didn't think he was anyone's child of surprise, but they honestly wouldn't have known if he was._

_"Nice excuse, Merten," Guxart catcalled. "We all know you don't like babies."_

_“Come on, tell the story!” Lambert was whining, and the group was laughing._

_“Alright, settle down. I’ll finish it, and then it’s time to sleep, understand?” Merten laughed, waiting a moment for a calm to fall, before he began._

_“Like I said, it was time to claim my Child Surprise, so I left Kaer Morhen, and made my way to Lettenhove. It was a warm, sunny afternoon when I arrived, and I asked to speak with the lord of the manor, as I had saved him ten years prior. The man who came to the door was the same man that I had saved, and he welcomed me openly. As I spoke with the man, trying to determine if I had potentially been incorrect about what the surprise would be, when a child appeared from behind the man.”_

_“Your Child Surprise?”_

_Merten nodded. “From the first glance, I could feel the connection between us, the same way you can feel the connection between yourself, and your fellow Witchers. The boy was holding a book, a collection of fairy tales, told to children so they don’t fear dark bedrooms at night, and was likely wanting his father to read it to him.”_

_Geralt, Eskel, and Lambert were silent, having not heard these details before, as Merten continued._

_“But as soon as the man realized what I was looking at, he began to shout. ‘You won’t be taking my son!’, he screamed, but I noticed that as the boy began to back away, hiding in the shadows, he looked too young to have been the man’s son. Born too soon after the war, or too long after it had started, but he could not have belonged to him by blood. He was aware of it, too, judging by how his screams shifted.”_

_“What happened next?” Eskel was asking, and Geralt was curious too._

_“Unfortunately, I don’t quite remember. I remember that there was a sharp pain, as something hit my head, and I heard the boy shouting out the name of Aard as loud as he could, before being pushed backwards. After that, nothing.” Merten shrugged then, pointing toward Lambert’s medallion. “When I woke up, the boy was gone, and he’d taken my medallion with him. That was nearly a decade ago, and I still haven’t found him after. All I can do is hope that, wherever he is, my medallion is serving him well, and will help guide him home when he’s ready.”_

_“He should be here,” Geralt said. “He’s supposed to be_ here _.”_

_“I’m not disagreeing,” Merten soothed, as Guxart and Vesemir shared a_ look _. “But it seems that Destiny may have a different Path for him to follow, before he can join us.”_

_“Destiny can suck my cock!” Lambert exclaimed, loudly, causing Geralt to hiss because that was his_ ear _._

_“Language, Lambert,” Vesemir scolded._

_“Language, Lambert,” Eskel mocked, leading to a wrestling match between the boys._

Julek was sitting on the floor, sobbing, when he came out of Geralt’s memory. He wanted _that_ , the adults telling stories, friends, _brothers_ , his age who wrestled playfully on top of him. He wanted that more than he’d ever wanted _anything_.

Geralt slipped off the table and onto the floor, pulling Julek into his arms and holding him.

* * *

The problem with having an extended house guest, Julek discovered, was that you had to keep them entertained, or they did things like use up all of your potions ingredients. It wasn’t like they had any uses for half a dozen bottles of the various potions Geralt had decided they needed.

Geralt had used up all the Celandine, Mandrake, and Ribleaf Julek had retrieved from the botany classroom not once, or twice, but _thrice._ So clearly, something had to be done.

The final straw came when Geralt poured the very last of Julek’s most recently acquired vial of valerian into the most pungent murky green potion he’d ever seen.

“That’s it,” Julek said, rising from his cot. “It’s going to take _ages_ to get another bottle of valerian, and I can’t stand to watch you make another of whatever that thing is. So we’re gonna go do something else.”

“Such as?” Geralt asked, stirring the potion without making any move to follow Julek out of the bedroom that wasn’t big enough to have earned such a title.

“We’re gonna go run the walls.”

Geralt blanched, but couldn’t put much of an argument up when his favorite trainer agreed from his medallion that it was a magnificent idea.

What Geralt did not expect was for Julian to lead him to the bottom of a large spiral staircase in a seemingly unused portion of the castle. The very bottom of the staircase was a room with a small atrium, but it did not seem to be large enough for the kind of wall running he was familiar with. “Hmm?”

Julek smiled, ferally, and moved to stand in the center beneath the stairwell. And then he looked up.

When Geralt looked up, he realized that the staircase was so tall that they could not see the ceiling, it was simply open forever. He still didn’t understand what this could have to do with running the walls.

“Vesemir says unruly witchers run the walls, and using all my potions ingredients is as unruly as it gets. C’mon.” Julek jumped straight into the air, and landed in a crouch on the stairwell post at the bottom of the stairs. Geralt noticed that there was one such post on the inside of every corner all the way up the stairs.

“This isn’t running the walls of Ban Ard,” Geralt said. Running the walls of Kaer Morhen was much more involved than a simple staircase could ever be. They were still inside, at the bottom of a _staircase_.

Julek was grinning, the familiar sparking of chaos dancing at his fingertips as he prepared himself. “Maybe not when compared to what you’re used to, but this is how we do it here!”

Before Geralt had a chance to question him any further, Julek was already taking off, launching up the staircase and propelling himself up with the repeated use of Aard, a grin on his face as he went. If not for the chance of falling, or getting some other injury, Julek would have closed his eyes, and relished in the way it almost felt as if he were flying.

When he reached the railing marking the fifth story, he balanced on the top of the post, as he had at the bottom, before leaning down to wave at Geralt.

The Witcher was staring at him, what appeared to be a stunned expression on his face. "Your turn, Geralt!"

_"Think of it as another school's version of the gauntlet that you're unfamiliar with."_

Eskel. Thoughtful Eskel. Eskel, who wasn't here to help him. Fuck. Signs were Eskel’s speciality, and he’d be able to do this in his sleep.

_“Fuck you,”_ he thought back to Eskel. "What are the rules?" Geralt finally asked aloud, looking at Julek . He didn't feel the need to shout. He was certain the other Witcher could hear him.

"You don't know what the rules are? There's only two.”

Geralt raised an eyebrow and didn't grace that with a response.

"Floor is lava, and if you touch any part of the stairwell other than the posts, you have to start over from the bottom. Join me on this level, and then we can race to the top."

He considered the stairwell, and sighed grumpily as he climbed up onto the first post. The post groaned ominously under his weight. Why was he even considering this? This wasn’t a standard witcher training exercise, and he wasn’t obligated to participate in the insane game. Yet for some inexplicable reason, he was concerned about Julian’s safety if he decided to proceed all the way to the ceiling this way. “Fine, so what, I push myself up the staircase, only touching the posts, and only using Aard?”

Julek nodded, an excited grin on his face. “Exactly! You just need to see how high you can get, before you touch the railing or fall off.”

This had to be the stupidest, most dangerous thing that Geralt had ever done in the name of ‘training’. And he’d been playing Scare the Cat for nearly a decade. 

_“Merten’s Child of Surprise is_ insane _,”_ he lamented through the medallion. “ _Fucking insane.”_

_“He’s had no proper socialization since he was thirteen. That’s more than enough to drive anyone a little batty. Besides, he can’t be as bad as Lambert.”_

_“I’ll have you know I resent that.”_

Geralt sighed again, once again considering if he was actually about to do this, or if he valued living more.

_“Geralt, if you don’t do this, then I’m going to make sure that every single trainee learns this game, and that they all ask you why you don’t know how to play. You know I’ll do it, and you know that it won't even take that much convincing to get Eskel and Aiden in on it. Hell, I could probably get Coen to help too, you know how much he loves fucking with all the instructors.”_

_“Only because they made him run the walls every day for_ three _years.”_

_“And he still finds time to fuck with Guxart and Vesemir. Massive respect.”_

“Come on Geralt!” Julian shouted. “You’re wasting daylight! You used up all my valerian, it’s time to pay up!”

_“You have to admit, Geralt, that the consequences would be far more severe if you were here and had done something as stupid as stealing all of Triss’ Valerian.”_

_“I wouldn’t be dumb enough to steal from Triss.”_ He grumbled, trying his best to ignore the continued jeers of his siblings as he stared up at the challenge before him.

An Aard, and then another one. That’s the game. It’s an agility test, landing on the posts, but it’s a magical challenge too, and only the Griffins would value their signs so greatly, as far as Geralt knows. Signs are _not_ Geralt’s strength. He probably wouldn’t be here if they were.

Signs are the only weapon Merten’s Child of Surprise has, and he’s built for agility. Geralt could respect that.

Julek didn’t land on a single post until he stopped on the fifth floor, but he _had_ specified that every post was fair game. Geralt could use that. With that, he jumped, and used the necessary Aard to send him further into the air until he was able to reach the post on the second floor, and pull himself onto it. _The ground was going to get further away,_ he realized, studying the atrium below the stairs. Someone could break their neck, falling from far enough.

But that wasn’t a concern with Witcher reflexes. It would take a _lot_ to addle a Witcher long enough that they wouldn’t grab one of the railings before hitting the ground. With yet another sigh, he jumped and continued with the frankly ridiculous exercise.

Julek was still crouching on his post when Geralt finally hauled himself up to the fifth floor, and he looked very unimpressed, and almost disappointed. “Took you long enough.”

“I’m sorry your demonstration wasn’t clear enough to follow.”

Julek raised a hand to his chest, seemingly offended, if it weren’t for the grin on his face. “Oh, I’m _so_ sorry that you weren’t able to follow simple instructions! Here, let me show you again, slower this time, so that even the youngest of your school can understand what to do.”

He moved to leap towards the next post, but paused at the last second. “That’s strange,” he mumbled, frowning slightly. “I thought I-”

Whatever Julek was about to say, Geralt would never find out, as the mage stiffened, before pitching forward, falling towards the landing between the stairs.

Geralt jumped off his own post and onto the landing, already reaching out to catch Julek and preventing his head from hitting the ground. The scent of scorched flesh was overwhelming, and he wondered how he’d missed it when Julek had been climbing. He leaned forward to scent Julek’s neck. As a wolf witcher, it wasn’t necessary to get so close to find the emotion scents he was looking for, but somewhere along the way he’d never actually parsed Julek’s scents.

Unsurprising, the strongest scent was of pain, wrapped up in a charred scent that Geralt realized belatedly had never not been present. Then of course, equally unsurprising, a bitter fear scent. He would have expected it to be stronger, though, because he could still smell the lingering amusement that would have been from watching Geralt make the climb.

“Julian,” he said, “What happened? Where are you injured?”

_“Check his ankle, Pup.”_ Geralt was not expecting Vesemir’s voice in the medallion, but he heeded the advice. It was easy to follow the burnt scent to the appropriate ankle and lift Julian’s pant leg so he could see.

What he found was not at all what he was expecting. He’d never _seen_ the anklet of dimeritium he knew would be there, and he’d been expecting something delicate, possibly a thin piece of dimeritium locked to his ankle, but this was no thin piece of dimeritium. Rather, this was an entire heavy _shackle_. 

_“Triss_.”

Ankles were _not_ supposed to look like this. The veins from the top of Julek’s foot to the bottom of his knee ran black with poison beneath a spider web of burn scars that seemed as though they were etched into the skin. 

Geralt paid no attention to the arguing he could hear in the medallion, not until he heard the voice he’d asked for.

_“I’d risk half a golden oriole and half a swallow, if you have them in your kit.”_ Triss’ voice was deceptively calm through the medallion.

_“If I do, it’s back in his room. I didn’t think that my kit would be needed for a simple game.”_ Running the walls, Julian had said. You weren’t supposed to need half a potion kit to run the walls. It was one of the safest exercises that they had for training, meant for practicing agility, and building endurance. Not something that could lead to harm, or even death.

And yet, here they were, although Geralt supposed this too wasn’t likely life threatening for Julian, despite being far from comfortable or healthy. The other witcher wasn’t screaming, but he still seemed less than half conscious, and possibly too used to such pain to scream. “Julian, we need to go back to your rooms.”

He received a glassy eyed stare for his trouble. And then the stare shifted from looking at Geralt’s face to looking at the dimeritium anklet, and then Julek _squealed._

Gently, Geralt put one arm under Julian’s head and the other under his knees and carried him back to his room and put him on his bed. The seemingly random assortment of potions he’d brewed over the past week were still sitting on Julian’s table, but they weren’t so random as he’d seemed to think they were. The first things he’d brewed had been several of each of the most commonly used potions, and then whatever he could make after that. Including the potions Triss had recommended.

Half a vial of a golden oriole and half a vial of swallow. 

It took the mage an hour to come back to himself, and even then he did little more than shudder and curl in on himself before casting Geralt the most forlorn expression he’d ever seen.

“Can I get you anything?” Geralt asked.

“Valerian tea,” Julian grumbled. “Oh wait, you used all the valerian.”

There was a very small part of Geralt that almost regretted using the valerian in his last potion, but he also supposed that there were a lot of more inconvenient ways to learn one’s limitations than five stories into running a Ban Ard Stairwell.

_“Triss? If he really can’t sleep later, would a small dose of sleeping drought hurt him?”_

_“I wouldn’t have encouraged it, but it won’t hurt if he ends up being too wound up to sleep.”_

_“Give him a chance first, before making any assumptions, though. You don’t know if he’s been drugged in the past, or if there could be any other similar trauma.”_

Geralt nodded, making sure that the gesture would translate through the medallion properly. It wasn’t often that Yennefer decided to speak through the medallions, often choosing instead to have someone else convey the message for her, so when she would, it was important to pay attention.

Julian’s pout deepend. “I’m cold, Geralt!”

Geralt raised an eyebrow. “What would you have me do about that?” There were no extra blankets in the room, and not much of a place to light a fire. He palmed the green potion and approached the bed and placed it on a closer shelf where Julian could see it, as well as see that it was labeled as a sleeping draught.

He sat on the edge of the cot, and reached to touch Julian’s forehead for fever. He didn’t really smell feverish, just pained.

Most of the schools had a pretty similar body temperature, with the cranes running the warmest, and the Vipers were the exception, as they ran significantly cooler than even humans.

Julek was _easily_ as cold to the touch as one of the Vipers, and possibly even colder.

“ _Warm,_ ” Julian hummed, reaching for Geralt. “You’re so _warm_.”

With a long suffering sigh, Geralt let himself be encouraged into a horizontal position as Julek shifted to curl up right on top of him. He and his siblings had spent many winters doing the exact same thing to each other.

It was a Witcher thing, after all.

* * *

Every single day, Julek woke up at an hour that Geralt decided was obscene, and dragged him down to the bottom of the stairwell for "Training". Geralt really thought it was torture, but he couldn't decide whether it was supposed to Julian self flaggelating or Julian torturing Geralt. It was a race, Julek would say. A race to the top, using Aard. And inevitably Julian would be faster at first, but he'd be forced to stop when the pain was too much.

Geralt kept a bottle of swallow and golden oriole in his pockets now, and he'd administer the appropriate half dose and carry Julek to bed where they would inevitably sleep most of the day away. But slowly, Geralt noticed as things changed. He landed on fewer posts, and Julek would taunt him from higher stories, and half a dose of potions became Julek asking for a quarter of swallow while still crouching on a beam before taking off again.

"It's not about overpowering a single sign," Julek said one day while Geralt was nursing a headache from crashing into the railing after overpowering an Aard. "It's about pacing yourself and casting each sign the same."

It made sense, Geralt supposed. Julek’s training exercise was about developing magical stamina, not increasing the strength of a single sign. If aim was impeccable, then a single sign to end a fight could be useful, but it could be more useful to be able to blast multiple signs in close frequency.

  
“Being able to maintain a Quen for a period of time can be just as useful as a repetition of signs. Perhaps we should add that to the training.” What Geralt really missed was sparring with his siblings. He couldn’t properly spar with Julek, they had no weapons, and a magical combat would have been too dangerous yet. His signs _were_ improving, though, and that was useful.

* * *

"Okay, Geralt. It's your turn to teach me a skill," Julek said one afternoon after they'd finished brewing a dozen potions and taken a nap that had been far too short.

Geralt considered. He was pretty sure making the potions with Julek had been the developing of a skill and what he really wanted was another nap, but Julian smelled of contentment and raw energy and had not looked so awake since the first day he had shown Geralt his exercise.

It would have been selfish to squander that.

"What kind of skill do you want to learn?" Geralt asked, idly wondering if Julek would be agreeable to learning Gwent. Stregobor had taken Geralt's swords and hidden them well, but he still had his deck of cards.

"I don't imagine you can teach me how to cast a portal, so I'll settle for a weapons skill."

Geralt sighed. "Do you have a weapon?"

"Other than signs?"

Geralt was tempted to say something about the signs not being a weapon, if only to mess with Julek. But that wasn't the truth of it. Signs were a Witcher's weapons and Julek was even better than the magically talented Griffins.

"I have it on good authority that I have quite the Igni," Julek added. “But I digress. The medallion won't teach me a melee weapon because if I come up with any bad habits they can't correct me. Since you're here, you should do It."

Geralt considered. Julek was built somewhere between a Viper and a Cat, and Geralt's preferred technique would have been the wrong form for Julek. Great big swords that might need two hands to wield was not a favorable technique for someone whose first weapon was magic.

The other problem was of course the lack of sharp objects in the room.

"I can teach you daggers. If you can find some."

"Tomorrow," Julek said. "Tomorrow I'll bring you some daggers, I only have one." 

"Hmm," Geralt hummed. "Where does that leave us tonight?"

Julek grinned. "Do you have anything else you could teach me?"

Geralt pulled the Gwent deck out of his pocket. "Let's play a game."

Geralt was not expecting Julek to bring him an entire armful of incredibly shoddy daggers made of steel and silver after training the next morning. But he did.There was also a whetstone of slightly better quality.

And so their mornings were spent racing up the stairwell and their evenings spent on dagger training after an afternoon nap. It was positively domestic.

* * *

They were sitting together, talking as usual. It was after morning training and a nap, but they hadn’t moved on to practicing with daggers. 

It had been nearly two months after Geralt had been kidnapped, and the pair had been growing closer, spending almost every moment together.

As usual, they were both sitting atop Julek’s cot, their knees nearly touching as they spoke. From pranks hidden from peers, to places they’d always wanted to see, the conversation had bounced between topics faster than a child who’d eaten too many sweets.

“Once, when I was about twelve, I spent a month of late nights, completely changing how the library is arranged. No one could find anything for the two weeks it took them to put most everything back, but there are still a few books that have been ‘lost’, even after all these years.” Julek laughed, remembering the chaos that had filled the library while he had been putting his plan into action, and the sheer insanity that had taken hold as he’d managed to shift the whole library overnight.

Geralt was grinning. “One time, Lambert, Eskel and I snuck into the room that Vesemir, Guxart, and Merten share, and shifted everything a little bit to the left. They complained about bumping into things for weeks until they finally adjusted.”

Julek was grinning too. “Yeah?”

“And then we moved it all back.”

Julek laughed so hard, he nearly fell off the bed. He wished so badly that he’d thought of something so crafty, but if it had taken three Witchers to shift a single room, he doubted that he could have done it by himself.

Geralt was still smiling as he continued. “They never figured out that it was us that did it, either. At least, they never told us if they did. That wasn’t even the worst prank that anyone pulled, even during my own time at Kaer Morhen.”

Finally getting his laughter under control, Julek looked up at Geralt. “Oh?”

Geralt nodded. “Lambert snuck into their room another time, and found a logbook filled to the brim with reports of other pranks that trainees had pulled over the years, and the culprits. Sugar swapped for salt, mixing dye in with the laundry soap, building a small raft, and moving someone in their sleep so they ended up asleep in the middle of a lake, it was brilliant.”

The thought of a young Geralt sneaking around, causing chaos for his fellow trainees and instructors, sent Julek into another laughing fit. It just seemed to fit Geralt perfectly, to gather his fellow trainees for the sole purpose of making mischief.

Eventually, though, they had both calmed down, and had somehow shifted to both laying down, facing each other as the conversation became more somber.

“No one knows why I was left to become a Witcher,” Geralt was whispering, as if saying the words too loudly would summon someone. “My mother abandoned me on the side of the road as we were heading towards a town, and Vesemir found me not long after. None of the Witchers felt the pull of Destiny that would mark me as a Child of Surprise, and no one could find my mother to ask her why.”

Julek felt bad for Geralt. To be abandoned by one that you thought you could trust was a fate that was worse than any other. With Geralt’s words however, a faint, nearly forgotten memory came to his mind, and he shuddered, words escaping before he could hold them back. “My mother didn’t care that her husband was trying to sell me.”

Geralt took a sharp breath, but Julek wouldn’t let him interrupt him. Not when he was already struggling to come to terms with his own words. “I was just another annoyance, another pest to ignore in favor of more important things.” He paused for a moment, taking a breath to try and steady himself, before continuing. “I thought that things might be ok, when Merten came. I was still scared, but I’d read enough stories to know that if I were to be sent away with anyone, a Witcher wouldn’t be the worst option. But then I was stolen.”

The memory left him feeling almost numb, the same as he’d felt back then. But this time, there was a warmth nearby that helped to chase away the numbness. He looked down towards his chest, and saw Geralt’s hand resting there, offering his strength and support.

“He woke up moments after the portal closed,” Geralt whispered, as tears began to stream down Julek’s face. “Others came, too, to try and help. Vesemir, Triss, and Yennefer, they were trying so hard to act fast enough. Just a few more moments, and they would have been able to save you.”

“I wish that they had,” Julek shook, taking deep breaths as he tried to keep from breaking. “If Destiny could have given me any gift, I would wish it to be that.”

Geralt shifted then, pulling him closer. “They looked for you, you know. Until the seasons changed, and there was no choice but to return for the winter.” He paused a moment, before continuing. “And even then, the first day that the pass between Kaer Morhen and the rest of the world opened, Merten left at dawn to keep searching, with over a dozen Witchers at his back, all determined to find you, though they all knew that the chances were slim.”

“Really?” Julek was begging, needing to know, but unable to imagine that he hadn’t been forgotten, that someone had still been searching, hoping that one day, they would bring him back to where he belonged.

Geralt nodded. “Every year, he still searches. And every year, he isn’t the only one. Others still search for you as well, asking in cities, towns, and villages, if any have seen a young man, bearing a medallion with the head of a manticore upon it. Even after Coen returned, saying that you were trapped here, they still continued, in case you managed to find a way out, or were set free. They hoped, spreading the word and the search, so that you would be able to find assistance if you needed it, and they all awaited the day you would be found, and brought home.”

Julek sobbed then, for the life that had been stolen away from him.”Tell me about it,” he pleaded. “Tell me about home?”

“Of course,” Geralt whispered, as he began. “Kaer Morhen is a home to all Witchers, no matter what school they belong to. Originally built as a home for those of the School of the Wolf, it became a safe haven for all, after several plots to destroy Witchers as a whole were uncovered. Several of the old keeps were destroyed, and many more abandoned, but Kaer Morhen has survived every attack against it, with the primary reason being that of location. You see, Kaer Morhen is hidden away, high up in the Blue Mountains, with only a single pass of entry, which is blocked for nearly a quarter of the year by heavy snow, and thick ice.”

Julek listened, as Geralt’s calm voice continued on, explaining details of the keep, from how the gate was constructed, to the tiniest markings that he, and others before him, had made in the stone walls of bedrooms and training rooms alike.

Eventually, the constant, even sound, paired with the exhaustion of staying up so late, dragged Julek down into a deep sleep, as the first light of dawn began to creep over the horizon.

* * *

It had been six months since Julek had met Geralt, and he was still no closer to being able to help him escape. Using a portal was out of the question, at least until he found the incantation and learned it. Yet that also made the assumption that whatever kept them tethered to Ban Ard would not also keep them from traveling through a portal.

“I hate this,” Julek complained as he entered the room, and sprawled on top of Geralt as the Witcher held him close. “I hate everything about this damned place.”

“What happened?” Geralt asked, rubbing Julek’s back gently.

“I hate him, I hate him, I _hate him_ ,” Julek growled. “He calls me by this creepy nickname, and taunts me with the fact that _he_ remade me as a Witcher different from the rest. That they won’t want me, that no one will ever want me, except him.”

Geralt held Julek tighter. “We _do_ want you. Stregobor doesn’t know about the medallions, but you know that we want you, that you’re Merten’s child of surprise and he would still want you despite anything.” One of Geralt’s hands moved, until it was resting in his hair, his fingers running through it gently. 

Julek sighed then, all his earlier rage vanishing, and leaving behind an old, familiar exhaustion in its place. “Why must Destiny have brought me here? I fear that even if I can find a way to free you, I will still be bound here.”

Geralt was silent for a moment. “I’m not sure of that,” he eventually spoke, slow and cautious, as if worried he may be proven wrong. “I feel the bonds of Destiny between us, and I doubt such a bond could be easily broken, even by one as meddlesome as Stregobor.”

“How do you know?” Julek asked, sitting up slightly, as he looked down at Geralt.

But Geralt was smiling, as he gazed up at Julek, adoration in his eyes. “I know, because you are as strong as the jaskier flowers that grow along the mountain. Because, even though anyone else would think that they would have died long ago, their roots frozen by the frost which lasts the whole year. And yet, without fail, it always returns with the coming of spring, even stronger than the year prior. It thrives in a place where one would think it would die out, just as you have.”

Julek felt his face heat, but he didn’t dare turn away. “You… You really think I’m that strong?”

Geralt leaned up then, gently using the hand still tangled in Julek’s hair to pull him into a gentle kiss. It lasted only a moment, but Julek was certain that it was the most perfect moment in his life, as all else seemed to fade away, leaving only him, and Geralt.

But eventually, every moment must come to an end.

When they finally pulled apart, Julek could feel himself grinning like a fool, and he knew that Geralt was no better. He rested his head against Geralt’s, and wondered if this feeling was the love that was spoken of in stories. Wondered if the strange, unknown, yet not unwelcome warmth was the same thing that people had started wars for, had ended wars because of, and had overcome all hardships from the strength it gave.

“I don’t think you’re that strong,” Geralt was whispering, his eyes gentle as he looked up at Julek. “I _know_ you’re that strong, my jaskier.”

Jaskier… with the way Geralt said it, full of so much love and affection that he didn’t even know could be fit into a single word, he thought that he would like being called that. It certainly felt more right than Julek, and he didn’t know if he could ever be called Julian again, after so long. But Jaskier, that would be a name given by one who cared for him, and who was bound to him by Destiny. It was a name that he would easily, and readily accept.

“I think I like that,” he whispered back, voice shaking slightly, as he closed his eyes. “Jaskier… I think I’d like to be called that.”

“Then I’ll make sure that everyone knows, when we reach Kaer Morhen.”

He opened his eyes then, and saw Geralt smiling at him. He smiled as well, feeling lighter than he had in years. “I will find a way to get us out,” he swore, and Geralt simply smiled again.

“I know you will, Jaskier.”

* * *

It was a long year for Geralt and Jaskier both. A v _ery_ long year. Jaskier and Geralt continued training in signs and daggers, and Stregobor found time to continue experimenting on Geralt and Jaskier, testing every aspect of their Witcher mutations from speed and strength to natural regeneration, and the greatest capacity of each of their senses.

Jaskier practiced magic until it felt like his entire being was on fire, but he and Geralt both grew capable of using the Aard to get to the top of the stairwell. After that, came improving on how long it took, and how many times they could do it in a morning.

And they swore to each other in the darkest part of night as they held each other, that they would find their freedom.

“We could communicate silently with the medallions, if you wanted to,” Geralt said one night. “The way my teachers already do for you. It would be a connection separate from the one you have with them, so they wouldn’t have to hear us if you didn’t want them to.”

“I’d like that,” Jaskier answered. It would be another way to subvert Stregobor’s intentions, and perhaps a way to gain the upper hand over him. And if not, it would still be a comfort. “Thank you.”

* * *

_“You’ll never believe this, Geralt.”_

Geralt shifted. Eskel mostly spoke to him through the connection they shared with Lambert, so it was unusual for Eskel to reach out to him alone. It was late, and Jaskier was sleeping. Jaskier spent most of his spare time sleeping though, so that was hardly strange.

_“Hmm?”_

_“Remember how Vesemir and Keldar have been more or less secretly feuding for at least a decade, and probably since Merten’s Child of Surprise was kidnapped?”_

_“Okay?”_ It had been an open secret that Keldar hadn’t approved of Vesemir and Merten’s methods in handling the situation with Jaskier living in Ban Ard, and things had been even more tense after Coen had returned. Possibly because Jaskier had gone through the experimental Trial of Grasses around that time, though Geralt didn’t know that for certain.

_“So Vesemir was helping me train with Renfri and Deidre on signs, and Keldar came in to watch. It turns out the girls are immune to signs, Aard would not move them, and Yrden did not slow them down. Afterwards, I sent them on their way to lunch, and you know what Keldar does? He saunters down to the middle of the room and he goes, ‘War is coming, Vesemir, and you’ve buried your heads in the sand. They’re immune to magic, and Stregobor's greed will stop at nothing to have them in his possession.’ I was glad the girls were out of earshot, but did it really need to be said? We all fucking know the war with mages is coming. Stregobor has Merten’s child of surprise and he has you, could make himself a fucking army if he felt like it.”_

Geralt didn’t really want to think about Stregobor finally getting around to finishing whatever his plans were. So he decided to head the conversation in a safer direction. _“How is their training coming along?”_

_“Renfri decapitated a training dummy yesterday! She’s a bloodthirsty little thing, but the Cats love her. Deidre’s more reserved, but I think she’s really flourishing here. Yesterday she managed to sneak up on one of the Cat trainees and scare him into a tree.”_

  
He smiled. He could imagine Eskel watching the girls train and taking pride in their achievements as they told him all about how their days went. _“Wish I was there,”_ he thought, and then realized that he _only_ meant it if it meant that Jaskier was there as well. He wanted to be at home with his brothers, but only if being there did not mean that Jaskier was all alone here. _He would not leave without Jaskier._

* * *

“Hurry up!” Geralt exclaimed as he looked over his shoulder at Jaskier. He was several stairs further ahead of the mage, and seemed fully capable of maintaining his speed.

Jaskier stopped, grasping the wall as he struggled for breath. It was easy, in this moment, to see just how much greater a properly trained witcher’s physical capacities could be. “Where are we going, Geralt?” he asked for the upteenth time, staring at the many flights of stairs spiraling ever further ahead of them. They were intimately familiar with this stairwell, as it was the stairwell they used for morning training, but Geralt had refused to allow him to use Aard to climb it, much to Jaskier’s chagrin. Geralt had insisted that they had to _walk._

“It’s a surprise! Come on, let’s go!”

It took an hour, or ten, but they finally reached the summit of the tower. They were at the entrance to a room, large grandiose doors blocking their way.

"You'll have to spell them open," Geralt said, biting his lip. "But it'll be worth it, I swear."

Jaskier considered the bulky doors, then nodded. Bracing himself against the flare it would cause against his ankle, he whispered the incantation that would unlock and push the doors open.

He gasped.

He had never been in this room before. It was a strange geometric shape, 13 equal sides. Except for the side that consisted of the door, and the frame on either side of the grand doors, there were 10 walls made of glass, as well as the ceiling above them.

It was night, and the clearness of the glass ceiling and walls allowed for a view of the night sky and a view of the far off mountains which Jaskier had never witnessed before. For the first time in a decade, Jaskier could _see_ the moon and whole constellations worth of stars.

"How did you even find this room?" he asked, awestruck. He’d been wandering Ban Ard for _years_ and such a room had never been hinted to exist.

Geralt shrugged. "I wanted to bring the outside to you."

" _It's perfect_ ." It wasn’t all he had missed, he couldn’t feel the sunshine on his skin, or the blades of grass between his toes, but he _could_ see the stars, and it had to be enough that Geralt had _found this_ and brought him here.

“I’d like to show you something,” Geralt said, motioning to a collection of blankets and pillows lying on the floor by the window on the opposite side of the room.

They sat before the window, reclining on pillows and sharing the softest of the blankets as they curled up together.

There was a spot along the mountain from which billows of smoke rose in the sky. From their vantage point, they could see the glow of flames that seemed to be licking a side of the mountain.

“What’s that?” he asked. “Is the mountain on fire?”

Geralt shook his head, and he frowned. Tears the second round of mutations had rendered him incapable of shedding seemed to glisten in his eyes regardless. “That’s Kaer Morhen’s welcome Bonfire. They light it at the end of fall nights to remind the Witchers on the path that it’s time to return home. It’s a magic fire, humans can’t see it.” He reached out, pressing a hand against the medallion against Jaskier’s chest. 

There was a faint pulse, a thrum of comforting magic that wasn’t Jaskier’s, that didn’t send a flare of pain through the mage’s ankle. “Grown witchers on the path don’t need the fire to find their way home, but it’s a reminder that there’s a place where we’re welcome. A place that _wants us_ , but not for the purpose that we serve.”

Witchers were considered a necessary evil, and though the purpose they served in ridding humans of their monsters was essential, that did not mean that they were welcome anywhere. They suffered humans to curse and cheat them, no choice or option to do otherwise than to complete the purpose for which they had been created. But at the end of the year, there was a place they could return to, that was _theirs_.

“Do you see that constellation?” Geralt asked, pointing to a series of stars in the sky.

“The one that looks like a dragon?”

Geralt grinned, pressing a kiss to Jaskier’s shoulder. “It’s called Villentretenmerth, the Golden Dragon. Guxart says we can see it from anywhere on the Continent, and it’ll always lead us back to Kaer Morhen. Witchers don’t hunt dragons any more, but the School of the Griffin used to, a long long time ago. An old Witcher from the School of the Griffin, called Keldar, was in Proviss because he’d heard about a lucrative contract for a winged creature. He didn’t know this, but the contract was actually for Villentrentenmerth, the last Golden Dragon. Keldar found the great creature’s lair somewhere in what is now called the Dragon Mountains, and it wasn’t at all what he was expecting.”

Jaskier held his breath.

“Witchers aren’t supposed to get involved in the affairs of men. Kill the monster harming humans and get paid before moving on. But it’s never that easy. The dragon may have scared the humans, but it hadn’t hurt them. And then there’s all the terrible things that humans too are capable of. Many harmful creatures are their own creations. Villentrentenmerth hadn’t hurt the people who wanted him dead, but the people had harmed him.”

“What did Keldar do?”

“Keldar begged the gods for mercy for the dying dragon, Villentretenmerth, and Melitele granted it. She cast him into the stars to guide us, and remind us that there’s always a choice, and always a place we can return to.”

Jaskier studied the dragon in the sky. “There’s always a choice,” he whispered. He held up his right hand, tracing the form of the dragon. With a moment of consideration, he drew a sliver of chaos into his hand, creating a pinprick of light on the tip of his finger that lingered as he traced the dragon. The burning sensation around his ankle was worth the expression of awe on Geralt’s face as they were left with a chaos infused light in the shape of a dragon over their heads. The mage thought it might be smiling at them.

“Always,” Geralt promised, pulling Jaskier closer.

The mage kissed the twice mutated Witcher-in-training. A choice to go or a choice to stay was not really much of a choice. He didn’t want to stay, and he shouldn’t have to either.


	6. Chapter 6

Everything came to a head on a chilly autumn day when Geralt and Jaskier returned to Jaskier’s room to find Stregobor waiting for them, twirling one of Jaskier’s daggers absentmindedly.

“I’ve given the both of you far too much freedom,” Stregobor declared. “Sharp blades, training regimens. I’ve let you run far too wild, and that ends now. You’re supposed to be  _ my  _ experiments, acting only at my behest.  _ My  _ fearsome and monstrous creations to be at the head of the army of my creation, subservient only to  _ me _ . And yet, you’re not loyal to me. Somehow you’re loyal to each other, and that is  _ unacceptable. _ ”

Jaskier shrank behind Geralt, suddenly terrified of whatever Stregobor was about to do to them.

“I wonder which of you would win a battle to the death. The fearsome wolf or the deadly dragon? I’ve wondered this for a while now, to be honest. The Wolf’s skill with swords would have been rumored across the Continent, and the Dragon’s skill with magic would be unmatched among Witchers. But who would win? Who would survive long enough to get a final blow against the other? Would it end in a mutual demise? Unfortunately, testing that would be a waste of the resources I spent countless decades gathering. Perhaps a battle to first blood, or lost consciousness would settle my curiosity. The winner will of course lead my army.”

“What army?” Geralt asked. He could almost hear the Witchers in the medallion humming in Jaskier’s head, calming him while also listening to every word of Stregobor as he possibly revealed his final plan. None of them really knew what Stregobor’s goals really were, only that war between the Witchers and Stregobor was inevitable.

“My Witcher army,” Stregobor answered, a sickening smirk forming on his face. “Axii does not work well on Witchers, but I’m coming very close to solving it. Julek has been the most delightful text subject. Putting you through a second round of mutagens should have had a similar effect as well, I do believe. Shall we find out? In a few hours my mages will be returning with two more test subjects for me. Perhaps you might know them? What an interesting reunion that could await them. To introduce you with the axii? Or just once without it. I’ll have to decide. But first, a battle to determine which of you shall lead and which of you shall submit.”

Jaskier watched in helpless despair as Stregobor’s fingers moved to form the dreaded sign. 

Geralt moved faster, fingers in his own sign and shouting “Quen!” in the moments before the Axii could be cast. Geralt’s strength and speed in sign casting had improved in the year of following the mage witcher’s training regimen, and both he and Jaskier could  _ see  _ as it fended off Stregobor’s spell if only for the moment.

“Run!” Geralt insisted when he noticed that Jaskier was still firmly rooted in place. “To the solar!”

They ran. They ran across Ban Ard and Aarded their way up the stairwell until they were able to barricade themselves inside the room with glass walls. Tethered as they were, they would not be able to run though any of Ban Ard’s few doors to escape the mage, and wherever they went it was only a matter of time before the head of the Brotherhood of Sorcerers found them. But if there was any place to make their last stand, it was here. Here at the tallest point of Ban Ard, in the room that had made them feel closest to  _ home _ .

“What’re we gonna do?” Jaskier asked, beseeching Geralt for any answer that could get them out of this alive. He could not stand to suffer another of Stregobor’s Axii’s. He would rather  _ die. _ “I can’t live under Stregobor’s thumb like this. He took my mind last time, Geralt. I still can’t remember how I came to be in the botanical gardens, or what happened while I was there.”

Geralt swallowed. Jaskier had been present when Stregobor had mutated him for the second time, but Jaskier had never remembered that he had been there. “We have the high ground,” he said. “That can be the tactical advantage. But we’re still trapped.”

Jaskier paced the length of the long side of windows. It was dark outside, so they could see the stars and the bonfire so far away, welcoming the Witchers home. “Your time here has made this the best year of my life. I know it’s selfish, but I’m glad I’m not all alone.” He continued pacing. “We would need a portal to get out of this mess, but I never found the spell. I’m sorry, Geralt.”

A moment later, a voice could be clearly heard through their medallions.  _ “The spell is Vond Agwathil. You have to picture a closed door between where you are and where you want to get to. Use your chaos to force the doorway to open, but you have focus on your destination. Almost a meditation. I don’t think it’ll work while you’re bound to the school though. Ban Ard won’t let you leave so easily.” _

“How do we break the spell keeping us here?” Geralt asked. “The doors won’t open.”

“We don’t have time for a counterspell,” Jaskier said. He stopped pacing and turned to face the glass windows. He took three steps backwards. “We have to break the windows.” He formed the sign for Aard at the window. The wall shook, but the windows held. He repeated it, stronger this time, and then again, even stronger. The room heaved and the ground shook beneath their feet, and still the walls held firm. Jaskier repeated the spell three more times in quicker succession, raising the amount of chaos he poured into the spell with each shout and yet for all that Geralt feared he’d bring the roof down on their heads, the building would not  _ give. _

Panting, but not defeated, Jaskier paced the length of the wall again.

Geralt could hear Stregobor storming up the stairs, but he was still far enough away that they had a few minutes left before the archmage started trying to break the barricade into the solar. It would not hold him for long once he arrived, Geralt knew that.

_ “Julian’s Igni has melted brick _ . _ ”  _ Geralt almost missed the quiet whisper from the medallion, but he caught the wisp of sound.  _ “School of the Dragon indeed.” _

“Jaskier,” Geralt called. “I heard a rumor that you have quite the Igni.”

“I once burned all of Stregobor’s research.” Jaskier walked to the center of the room. He inhaled deeply, focusing on the thrum of the medallion and the chaos in his bones. The anklet had muted his connection to the chaos, but daily use of signs had strengthened his connection to it. He barely felt the throbbing of the burns around his ankle. “An Igni strong enough to melt glass.” That didn’t sound physically possible, but they didn’t have any other options. He would not allow Stregobor to corner them like rats in a maze. The glass had to give so they could make their escape. They would not spend another night in Ban Ard. They would not allow Stregobor to Axii them into leading an army of Witchers. Stregobor’s war was coming, but not the one he thought he was about to start.

_ “Two more test subjects are about to arrive,”  _ Stregobor had said. Who were the mages attacking? He’d made it sound like it would be Witchers, which meant they had to intervene if possible. A portal wherever you want to go, one of the women in the medallion had said. You just had to picture it clearly and force the door open. Could it be so nonspecific as a battlefield of mages and witchers?

But first, they had to break the tethers.

Jaskier held his hands up, and inhaled as deeply as he could. On his exhale, he breathed life into the strongest Igni he could cast. “Igni!” he shouted as his fingers formed the shape of the signs. 

A ball of fire shattered the windows Jaskier was facing, and the force of it shook the ceiling.

Geralt’s eyes widened, and he moved to pull Jaskier into a hug. “You did it,” he whispered. He pulled Jaskier close, moving a hand through his hair before pulling him into a kiss. “I knew you could do it, I knew it.”

Jaskier sighed, leaning into Geralt’s embrace as he tried to catch his breath. For a moment, he allowed himself to simply exist, letting Geralt kiss him again. “Only because you believed in me,”

Suddenly, the barricade was broken by Stregobor with a single spell.

“I will admit that this has been impressive,” Stregobor gloated as he leaned against the doorway. “But it ends here. Your chaos, your very existence, belongs to  _ me. _ ”

_ “Time to go, Geralt,” _ Jaskier whispered through Geralt’s medallion.  _ “Do you trust me?” _

“Yes,” Geralt answered instantly, aloud. There was no lie, and no hesitation. Whatever Jaskier’s plan was, Geralt trusted it implicitly.

_ “A running start, then jump. Through the window. Now.” _

Even if Jaskier’s plan didn’t work, jumping through the window was probably better than letting Stregobor follow through on whatever he was planning on doing with that Axii, Geralt decided, and started running.

Jaskier ran right beside Geralt and together they jumped through the space left by the broken window. They could feel as the tethers pulled, trying to keep them in the building, but in the end, the spell was no match against gravity.

They were falling, but Jaskier grabbed Geralt’s arm, and forced himself to focus on what the voice had instructed. Witchers and mages and a battlefield.

“Vond Agwathil!” Jaskier screamed, and a moment later, they fell through a portal.

* * *

It was like riding a boat made of dry ice into a volcano under the sea.

He couldn't breathe, and the dimeritium anklet tightened like a fiery vice grip. He could feel the leash trying to pull him back towards Ban Ard through the portal and he resisted it with everything that made him who he was.

_ Eldar give me strength _ , he thought, and his thoughts turned to Stregobor’s gloating comments that he would soon have two more test subjects.  _ Witchers, they would be witchers, and they had to stop it. _

He was a salmon, swimming against the currents towards the place that was supposed to be home.

His amulet glowed with newfound strength, and with motion like a steel blade, the tether to Ban Ard was severed.

Jaskier fell through everything and nothing with the speed of a falling star, until after what felt like a thousand years, he crashed to the ground, barely able to find the energy to keep breathing through the endless nausea that was far more overwhelming than it had ever been in the past, and the burning that had overtaken his entire leg, where moments before it had been contained below his knee.

* * *

Geralt was shocked when the portal Jaskier had cast in midair landed him directly in the center of the training courtyard. It was night so there weren’t very many witchers around, but there were a few, and it did not take them long to have a handful surround him with swords drawn.

It made sense, no mage was supposed to be able to open a portal inside any of the Witcher keeps, for the protection of the ones who trained there, and those who could not protect themselves.

For a moment, Geralt wondered just how powerful Jaskier was, to be able to ignore the extensive warding that had kept out all other mages. But that moment was all it took for the Witchers to lower their swords, seemingly recognizing Geralt, though he had changed so drastically from the last time any of them had seen him.

“Geralt? Is that you?”

Geralt turned, seeing Vesemir starting at him with a look of surprise. He nodded. “Where’s Julian? It was his portal.”

  
“Not here,” Vesemir said. The witchers scoured the courtyard to see if Jaskier had landed with Geralt, but he had not. They were left to wonder where Jaskier might have landed, until very clearly in the Wolf and Cat Medallions came a,  _ “What the fuck!” _

* * *

“What the  _ fuck _ .”

Jaskier resisted the urge,  _ desire _ , to give in and collapse onto the ground. His entire leg burned more sharply than it had since he had been thirteen and given the Trial of Grasses.

Distantly, he could hear voices. Voices that he had never heard, either in the twisting halls of Ban Ard, or in the hazy, near forgotten days from before his life had been ruined.

“Lambert, look in my pack, and find every bandage, ointment, and salve that I have.”

“You can’t think you have enough, this kind of damage is nearly impossible to heal out here!”

“Of course not, I’m going to use yours as well. But I know for a fact that I have ointments that can treat burns, and I’m not certain if you do.”

Lambert…. That was a name that Geralt had mentioned before. That meant…

There was the sound of rustling, and Jaskier could feel careful hands reaching for him up until the point they noticed the medallion resting on the chain around his neck. He could  _ feel  _ the moment that they laid eyes on it, and after a moment, he could hear a sharp inhalation.

“Fuck… Aiden, it’s-”

Jaskier blinked, forcing down the haze that threatened to overwhelm him. There were two witchers standing before him, one with a Cat medallion and the other a Wolf medallion. The Wolf had to be Lambert, meaning the other witcher had to be Aiden. “Where am I?” he asked, dismayed by how difficult it was to form the words.

“Southern Kaedwen, South of Ard Carraigh,” Aiden answered. “I didn’t realize you were coherent. Would you let us bandage that leg for you?”

“Where is Geralt? Is he here?” Jaskier asked, looking around. He’d been touching Geralt when they’d gone through the portal, he should have been nearby. “We went through the same portal, he should be here.”

The Witchers shared a glance, and after what must have been a silent conversation with their medallions, Lambert said, “He’s safe in Kaer Morhen. We were headed there ourselves, but you look quite the worse for wear.”

“Have you got a Swallow on you?” Jaskier asked. He hadn’t needed one in a while, morning training with Geralt had done wonders for his resistance to the dimeritium, but apparently portalling had been the limit to that.

“Here you go.” Aiden handed one over.

Jaskier uncorked the bottle and drank half. After a moment of consideration, he rolled up his pant leg and poured the rest of it over the new burns. The shackle sizzled as the liquid splashed against it. “Delightful,” he grumbled, shaking his ankle. The dimeritium jangled and potion steam evaporated off it.

Aiden and Lambert stared as the newest burns healed, and with growing horror as the shackle continued bringing the potion to a boil. And yet Geralt's Witcher did not seem to register the smoldering metal against his skin.

They might have said something, or offered a different potion, except three medallions suddenly vibrated with an urgency indicating unfriendly chaos was coming.

Lambert drew a silver greatsword, Aiden drew two shortswords, one steel and one silver, and Jaskier signed a Yrden onto the ground ahead of them before drawing his silver dagger.

Three mages crashed into their clearing, and their motion was slowed by the yrden. They scanned the faces of the three Witchers before the leader of the group exclaimed, “You found him! You found our charge!”

Jaskier raised an eyebrow in confusion, as he had never seen these three mages before. He supposed they were just a few of Stregobor’s underlings, but there wasn’t a good way to determine that they were the mages Stregobor had sent to capture two Witchers. There was no way to know that his portal had worked the way he had intended it to at all. Deciding that he had nothing to lose, he tried his luck. “I’ve never seen you in my life.”

The leader of the mages frowned, looking almost genuine in his concern. “You saw us just yesterday, when it was determined that we would keep watch over you while your previous caretakers served their time at court, don’t you remember?” He paused for a moment, before sighing, turning his attention towards Aiden. “This is the first time he’s been without a carer for many years, and the transition has him confused, the poor child. We do thank you for keeping him safe, but I believe we should be able to safely return him to his home from here.”

Lambert sneezed, and then he sneezed again.

Jaskier inhaled, curious what Lambert could possibly have scented from the mages, and the scent of honey and coal burning in a swamp was so overpowering it had him sputtering. So that was what lying smelled like to those with Witcher senses.

“When you refer to his home, are you referring to Ban Ard?” Aiden asked.

“For the time being, but it is our hope that we can help stabilize his grasp on reality, and he will be able to live on his own.”

“Isn’t Ban Ard the school for young mages to get their magical education? Are you sure that’s the safest place for someone who you say does not have a stable grasp on reality? Don’t you think it would be far too easy for him to wander off and right into, say, a magical duel?”

“We have considered other living situations, but unfortunately, there is no safer place for him, as he is a mage on his own, with power that he cannot control and often uses without intending to, as he does not fully understand when one should use magic, and when one should leave it alone.”

Aiden tilted his head. “My understanding is that a shackle of dimeritium such as this one prevents one from using any magic at all. Wouldn’t that be unconducive to the development of control over one’s chaos?”

The mage nodded his head, hands raising in a kind of shrug. “Unfortunately, you are correct, but it all returns to his lack of awareness of reality. As you can see, his leg is burnt, tragically through his own magic. He believed a rabid dog to be attacking him, you see, and he attempted to chase it away through use of flame, only to sear his own flesh, as there was no dog biting him. Just him, in an empty room, and an imagined threat.”

_ “Geralt,”  _ Jaskier whispered through the medallion.  _ “Are you well?” _

_ “Safe in Kaer Morhen,”  _ Geralt answered almost instantly.  _ “Yen is trying to get us a portal to your location, but there seems to be a magical disturbance of some kind.” _

_ “Stregobor’s mages are telling wild stories, trying to convince Aiden and Lambert to release me into their custody.” _

_ “Which isn’t gonna happen, so you can just calm down,”  _ a new voice cut in, and Jaskier had to fight to keep from startling.  _ “Just breathe, Jaskier. Aiden is distracting them, and trying to buy us time until Yen and the others can get help to us. You’re not going anywhere, and we’re not gonna give you up, so you better get that thought outta your mind, you hear?” _

_ “I’m not going back,”  _ Jaskier declared. 

_ “That’s the spirit, now, let’s see what kind of stories they want to tell of you, so we can laugh about it when we get home for dinner.” _

Jaskier closed his eyes, half listening to Aiden and the mages’ rambling counterpoint and half trying to locate the source of the magical disturbance preventing the Witchers from casting their own portal into the area.  _ “Show me Kaer Morhen, Geralt?” _

A moment later an image appeared in Jaskier’s mind. It had to be from the courtyard, as he could clearly see the entire castle, from the wide open gates to the top of the parapets. There were witchers in the courtyard, fencing, but they only served to make it feel more welcoming. A safe and happy place.

Beside the image of the castle, Jaskier focused on conjuring in his mind the image of star pattern that Geralt had said would always lead the Witchers home. Villentretenmerth the dragon.

_ Wasn’t he supposed to be a dragon? No, Stregobor had slain a dragon and stolen its blood, and for what? _

_ “Do you think I would be able to cast the portal to Kaer Morhen?” _ Jaskier asked. He’d have to get closer to Lambert and Aiden, but he could pretend to be approaching the mages and then cast it before they could react.

_ “Do you trust that you have the magical energy to not only create the portal, but hold it stable long enough, either for help to arrive, or for us to fall back?” _

He blinked at the second new voice, and then realized that it was simply Aiden. It was a good question, Jaskier could understand its purpose, but he wasn’t sure he knew the answer. How much chaos had it taken to cast the first portal? He mostly knew his limit when it came to using aard to get to the top of the stairwell, but how many aards did it take to cast a portal?

The Swallow. Taking the potion while doing the stairwell exercises had helped increase the distance he could go, and took the edge off how much his ankle hurt, which was usually his limitation for magical use. He could probably cast the portal spell again, in that case.

Jaskier stumbled forward, making it appear that he was more unstable than he really was by dropping the dagger in his hand. It wasn’t a very nice dagger, as Geralt had always said, and if they were going to Kaer Morhen perhaps he’d be able to replace it with a better weapon. He leaned heavily on Lambert’s side, harder than necessary, and wondered if it would fool the mages.

“Master Caretaker?” he said, carelessly cutting through the BS with a voice an octave or two higher than necessary in an attempt to portray the young man the mages were trying to paint him as. “Do we have time to play a game with these nice men before you take me home?” He’d rather  _ die  _ than return to Ban Ard.

The mage clearly knew this, as it was nearly impossible to disguise the shock that was clear on his face, but he eventually schooled his face to one of a tired guardian, rather than that of a nervous trainee, who was clearly in over his head. “Now, I’m sure that these wonderful men would be willing to play with you, but we wouldn’t want to waste their time, would we? Besides, the others are all waiting for us at home.”

“Surely you have time for one game, before you leave?” Aiden suggested. “We would be  _ happy _ to play a round of Julian’s choice.”

“No, I’m sorry, we really don’t have time for that. Julian,  _ come here. _ ”

Jaskier could see the sign being formed, and for a moment he was terrified that it would work on him, that they could use it against him to put him back in a mind fog for weeks as Stregobor had done before.

_ “We believe Stregobor’s Axii only works on you because he brewed your Trials. A random Mage’s axii has never affected any Witcher alive. But you could gain the upper hand, if he believes it’ll actually work.” _

The spell hit him, and as Vesemir suggested, he still had his wits about him, though he could also feel the intention and direction of the spell.  _ Subservience,  _ but too  _ vague. _ The image of Kaer Morhen and the dragon constellation sprang back into his mind as he knelt on the ground in the slowest of motions, on an inhale that summoned his chaos to his core. The medallions on their necks vibrated, but not with unfamiliar chaos. Rather, with the gentle hum of one’s favorite wind chime upon the arrival of an old friend.

Jaskier gripped the soft ground until his knuckles would have turned white if he had still been an unmutated human, and he whispered the incantation. “ _ Vond Agwathil. _ ”

Chaos swirled around the three of them, and an instant later they were falling through the portal in the ground. This one was less violent than the first, Jaskier found. More like gliding as a bird through a swift breeze than falling into a volcano. All he could see was Vellentrentenmerth as a golden dragon guiding them over the forest and up the mountain faster than any creature could ever travel.

Everything was a blur until just as suddenly they were all crashing back into the ground.

* * *

Jaskier was aware of the ground, first. And the fact that he was cold, and there was something really heavy on top of him.

From what seemed like far away he could hear a discussion about swords.

“Is that a sword?”

“Might be more than one sword.”

“I swear that there was  _ not  _ a pile of swords here a moment ago.”

There was silence for a while, or maybe he’d dozed off because then suddenly he was being jostled on both sides. “Aiden, Lambert, anything broken?” The voice had to belong to a young girl, but Jaskier couldn’t place it. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Jaskier,” the lump to the left of him said. “Jaskier, are you alright?”

  
“Mdkgh,” Jaskier grumbled. Why was it so  _ cold _ ?

“Next time you portal us somewhere, can you make sure we land on solid ground and not inside a fucking snowdrift?” the lump to the right asked.

_ Everything hurt,  _ Jaskier decided, and he was never ever portaling again. “Next time, you can walk.”

There was a laugh to his right, and then all the weight against his sides was pulled away.

“Jaskier? Can you sit up?”

“Wake me up when the snowdrift melts,” Jaskier decided. “I’m not moving.”

Minutes passed, and then, “Jaskier! Let’s get you out of there, that can’t  _ possibly  _ be comfortable.”

“Ralt?!”

Warm hands surrounded him and then the weight on top of him was removed and he was lifted out of the cold.

“Triss says you can have another half bottle of Swallow in an hour. Do you want to go inside in the meantime?”

Jaskier forced his eyes open. Geralt was carrying him, and they were in a courtyard he had never seen before.

Except that wasn’t true. He had seen it before, both in the image Geralt had sent him through the medallion, and in the memory Geralt had shared with him months earlier. Kaer Morhen, home of the Witchers.  _ He was free. _

Carefully, he shook his head. He hadn’t been outside since Stregobor had stolen him from his home, and he wasn’t ready to give up on it yet. It was still dark, and he was cold, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about that. “Can we lie down out here? Is that okay?”

“Of course that’s okay,” Geralt whispered. “Coen even brought us some blankets.”

Geralt laid him down on a warm fur that had been spread out against one of the castle walls, only a short distance from the stairs up into the castle. There were also several more blankets folded up on top of the fur, and Geralt laid them over him before sliding under the covers behind Jaskier.

Jaskier was just about to fall asleep when suddenly the medallions started humming in an unfriendly manner again.

He and Geralt both sat up, but Geralt put a hand on his shoulder to keep him from jumping up. “Let someone else handle it, Jaskier. We’re safe here.”

“But-” Jaskier whined.

Geralt pressed a kiss to Jaskier’s shoulder. “This is our home,” he whispered. “Anyone who would dare attack us here should have taken a second hard think about attacking the Witcher Stronghold in the wintertime when everyone is  _ home _ .”

A portal opened inside the front gate of Kaer Morhen, and a dozen mages led by Stregobor flooded out of it.

Jaskier and Geralt were on their feet instantly, Geralt already reaching for a sword and grabbing a dagger for Jaskier. But the actions were superfluous. Dozens of witchers in full battle armor and drawn weapons poured out of the castle and into the courtyard.

“Return Julian Alfred Pankratz De Lettenhove in the next ten minutes, or we will burn the whole of Kaer Morhen, last remaining stronghold of the Witchers, to the  _ ground _ .”

Jaskier pressed himself against Geralt’s back.  _ Stregobor was already gloating.  _ What if he went through with it? What if they did burn Kaer Morhen and its inhabitants to the ground just to get to him?

Should he surrender? Would that be more humane?

An old witcher Jaskier could almost recognize paused at the top of the stairs. “That’s not the threat you seem to think it is, Stregobor. You have come to the true home of not one, but seven Schools of Witchers, defying Destiny for the last time. Julian Alfred Pankratz, or, as he has chosen to call himself, Jaskier, is the child of surprise of Merten of the Manticores, and is under our protection. No harm shall come to him here. Not while we still breathe.”  _ Vesemir. _

“It’s a shame that it has come to this, Old Vesemir. Has it really been so long since you were one of my prized experiments? A shame, a real shame, that I must destroy your legacy. But I suppose it must be done, for I am so close to finishing my research, and you are standing in the way of my victory. Mages, attack them. Slay them all, if that’s what it takes, but harm not a single hair on my precious Julek.”

Jaskier cowered into Geralt’s side. Part of him wanted to flee, to run into the castle and hide where Stregobor could never find him. But he knew that he could never bring himself to do that. He was by no means as knowledgeable in combat as the trained Witchers prepared to protect him, but he was hardly defenseless, and who was he to hide when lives were on the line?

So instead, they stood and watched as the mages walked into a massacre. There was no other suitable word to describe it. A dozen young mages against an entire keep of Witchers was not a fair contest.

Which was strange, Jaskier thought. Stregobor had been meddling and planning for several hundred years. Why would he wage such an unprepared attack? He had to  _ know  _ that there were more than a hundred witchers present in the keep. So why attack with such an underwhelming force?

_ Unless it was a diversion. _

“Geralt, is there a good vantage point somewhere on the roof?” Jaskier asked. “Something doesn’t feel right about all this.”

Geralt tilted his head, then nodded. “Lambert likes to sit on the roof of the tower above my room. I can lead the way.”

They slipped into the keep, past the Witchers still running out of it.

“What are we going to be looking for?” Geralt asked as he led the way for the stairwell that would lead to the Wolf tower.

“I’m not sure,” Jaskier answered. “Twelve mages against a keep full of Witchers? Stregobor would know better that there’s no chance of a win there. It sounds like a diversion. Give someone else a chance to sneak into the castle and kidnap the target? But he would know there’s witchers around guarding me.”

Geralt froze. “Unless you’re not the only target.  _ C’mon. _ ”

They were halfway up the Wolf stairwell when they heard a loud scream of pure terror from somewhere nearby.

Geralt and Jaskier burst into the room, weapons drawn, to find Stregobor holding an anathema against the neck of Eskel’s child of surprise, Renfri a few feet in front of him holding a short sword in front of herself in a defensive position.

“Julek, Geralt, how nice of you both to join this celebration. Two daughters of Lilit, and my two most prized experiments, all brought together by me. What a night to remember. Any of you take so much as a step, and I’ll slit this pretty girl’s throat.”

Jaskier’s eyes widened, and he felt his breathing speed up. He felt like he was a child again, watching helplessly as Merten and his stepfather fell towards the stairs. There was nothing that he could do, nothing that he could say, that would change what was about to happen. He would be taken back to Ban Ard, and he would be forced to stay there for the rest of his life, and he could only see one way to escape if he was forced to go back.

_ "Magic doesn't work on them,"  _ Geralt whispered in his head, almost as though he was reading Jaskier's thoughts.  _ "No aard will ever knock them over, and no Axii ever make them do anything they don't want to do." _

_ “But what if it will? What if it happens again, and I hurt someone?” _ Jaskier asked, begging for another option, another way, even though he knew that there wouldn’t be one.

Geralt didn't have an answer. Instead, he sent a wave of affirmation and love through the medallion.  _ I love you to the end of the line. _

Jaskier felt tears fall, as he raised a hand, forcing the one who’d kept him trapped for so long away from the young girl, pinning him against the wall. “You  _ will not hurt them _ ,” he breathed, the force of his Chaos amplifying his words into a command that could not be ignored.

The girl with the short sword leapt forward around her friend, and swiftly parted Stregobor from his head with a single swing.

Before Jaskier could realize what was happening, it was over. After so many years, so much pain, Stregobor was gone.

He fell to his knees, suddenly unable to keep himself standing anymore, as exhaustion overtook him.  _ They were free. Finally free. _

He could feel arms wrapping around him, pulling him into a warm chest. “You’re safe, Jask, we all are,” Geralt whispered. “Renfri,  _ thank you.  _ Deidre, are you alright?”

“We’re ok,” a soft voice answered, though it was a little shaky. “We just didn’t expect him to appear so quickly.”

The door behind them burst open. “Deidre! Thank goodness you’re okay!”

“Eskel! Renfri and, I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name, they did good, Eskel.”

“They did,” another voice agreed, one that Jaskier could place after a moment of consideration.  _ From the medallion.  _ Jaskier shifted slightly, so he could peer over Geralt’s shoulder at the older man standing in the doorframe behind someone Geralt’s age he guessed had to be Eskel.

There came the sound of a sword hitting the floor, and the soft padding of feet as both girls launched themselves into Eskel’s arms. They were young, Jaskier realized though perhaps he’d already know that. Far too young to have found themselves in the middle of Stregobor’s war. And yet they had survived. They had all survived, and it was  _ finally over _ .

“We should convene in my study,” Vesemir said. “There’s a fire going, and I have some chocolate we can share. Someone else can clean this up.”

* * *

Jaskier wouldn’t remember how he got to Vesemir’s study, but he would remember sitting half on Geralt by the fire, drinking hot cocoa as Triss and Yennefer sang gentle melodies, lulling Renfri and Deidre to sleep across Eskel’s lap. There was no way this was real, no way that Stregobor was dead and they were just quietly celebrating quietly.

There was no way that, after so many years, it had been that easy. It had to have been a trick, or he’d been dreaming, and had managed to fool himself into believing that such a thing could ever be possible.

But it was a good dream, one he never wanted to end. He’d never had anything that tasted as divine as this chocolate, wasn’t sure how his mind could have ever conjured something so delicious.

“You can rest,” Vesemir said, when he draped a blanket over Eskel and the girls and noticed that Jaskier was fighting to keep awake. “We’ll all still be here in the morning.”

* * *

Jaskier awoke again to Geralt shaking him excitedly. “They found the key to your shackle!” he exclaimed. “You can finally be free of it!”

He blinked. “What?”

“Stregobor had the key to your dimeritium shackle on his person, and they found it when they dragged his body down to the pyre to burn with the rest of the mages. The last piece of his attempt to bind you can finally be removed!”

He blinked again. “Really?”

Geralt held up his hand, and Jaskier realized that there really was a key in it. “Yep! Ready?”

Still in disbelief, Jaskier shifted and held out his leg for Geralt. A moment later, Geralt was putting the key in lock and the shackle was falling to the ground.

Like the crash of a tidal wave, he could feel his chaos swirling under his skin for the first time in  _ years. _ . In those first weeks of wearing the suppression anklet, he hadn't been able to find the words to describe to himself what had been missing.

Now, now that he could feel it and the nausea that had coiled coldly in his gut for a decade was finally gone, he was sure that he could explain it quite elegantly.

A torture worse than death for older mages, older mages so accustomed to the chaos in their veins that they didn't know how to live without it.

_ “Thank you _ .”

Geralt smiled, before leaning in to kiss Jaskier. “You’re welcome,” he murmured between kisses, and Jaskier found himself wrapping his arms around Geralt’s neck, bringing the Witcher closer.

Jaskier would have been content to kiss and nuzzle against Geralt’s neck forever, but eventually there came a throat clearing sound somewhere behind them.

“I would appreciate it if you two could please vacate my office,” Vesemir said. “There should be breakfast in the kitchens if you’re hungry."

Jaskier felt his face heat, and he found himself trying to hide from Vesemir’s gaze, even as Geralt lifted him, carrying him out of the room with a laugh.

“Can we go outside?” Jaskier asked.

“Of course!” Geralt answered, and proceeded to carry him outside. “You have to come meet Merten!”

“Only if you put me down.”

“Okay,” Geralt conceded, and put Jaskier down on his feet.

Jaskier swallowed as he processed.. Geralt was already pulling towards the courtyard, and he had no choice but to follow, but if anything that only increased the rising dread.

Coen and Geralt had both assured him that Merten was alive, and he’d even seen Geralt’s memories of the same Witcher to whom he was the Child Surprise. But being assured intellectually that the old Manticore still lived was different than being encouraged to finally go meet him face to face.

What if Merten didn’t like him? What if he was angry about him stealing the medallion?  _ What if he wanted it back? _

“What if he doesn’t want me here?” Jaskier whispered. “What if he wants me to leave?” There was still the possibility that Stregobor would gather some mages to track him down. What if his being here put everyone in Kaer Morhen at risk?

“Jask, he’s going to  _ love  _ you. He’s been telling everyone for years about how impressed he was by your signs and ability to catch him, a seasoned Witcher, off guard enough to steal his medallion.”

“But what if I can’t live up to his expectations?”

Geralt stopped moving, but his grip on Jaskier's hand tightened as he turned to study Jaskier's furrowed brow and genuinely worried expression. "You already have, and I promise, Jaskier, no one here will ask any more of you than you want to give. I promise, the Witchers here  _ won't  _ take your autonomy away from you.."

Jaskier smiled, sadly. "Let's get this over with, then."

With a nod, Geralt continued leading the way towards the forest. There were a few Witchers and Witchers-in-Training in the yard doing various things from training to completing their chores, but while they glanced at Geralt and Jaskier, nobody stopped what they were doing to surround them.

"Vesemir and Guxart threatened them with extra laps through the Gauntlet if they bothered you before you were ready to introduce yourself," Geralt explained. "They didn't want you to feel overwhelmed." 

At the edge of the forest, there was an old man meditating. He was wearing a simple black tunic and leggings that would have been a comfortable layer to sleep in, or to wear under armor, but that might have been not quite enough warmth for such a brisk day if one were human.

"Merten!" Geralt exclaimed. "Merten, this is Jaskier."

The old Witcher opened his eyes. "Geralt," he greeted, before he glanced at Jaskier, his gaze falling on the Manticore Medallion hanging from his neck.

Could it really not be too late for him?

Merten stood, and extended an arm. Jaskier thought he was going to shake his hand, but instead Merten pulled him into a hug. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “You’re family, Jask. You always were, and this is your home.”

  
Jaskier wept. That was all he’d ever wanted. A place that was really his, where he was treated fairly and not as a prized prisoner. He was finally  _ home _ .


End file.
